In The Zone Agility Day 1
Today was miserable! The website for the agility host is terrible and included a "tentative" schedule for the weekend, but no confirmation that the schedule would be, in fact, as posted. Also, I had no idea how quickly the trial would progress. At the only other agility trial Faith and I have attended, they had two rings going at one time and things moved right along. Anyway, the point of this is that I got up at 5:30 and got to the trial site by 7:30, and Faith and I did not have our Jumpers run until almost 4 in the afternoon. I guess it was more fun to be stuck waiting at an agility trial than a rally/obedience trial, since agility dogs are more fun to watch. But still, it was horribly boring. The morning wasn't so bad because it was overcast and cool outside, but then the clouds burned off and it got sunny and v. hot. I felt bad for Faith because I could not get her cool enough so that she would stop panting.
When our run finally came, I was mostly so relieved that soon I would get to go home that I thought I wasn't going to be nervous. I did not get that nervous feeling until just before our run, and it disappeared as soon as we started. Part of that was that our potential Q went right out the window as soon as we started because Faith knocked the very first bar. :( Other than that, she was wonderful. She did not get excited while we were waiting. She was perfectly calm getting set up and getting her collar taken off. And she listened very well to me! The course was:
My path is in red and Faith's is in blue. The lines are jumps and the blob is a tunnel. Faith was awesome driving towards the tunnel when I told her to go. I did not have to go as far as I drew my line. The ugly part that I messed up on was the front cross in the middle. This is the same thing we've been working on in class, and I waited too late to tell Faith that the cross was coming. I had to freeze for a minute for her to see where I wanted her to be because she kept going on on the wrong side after the jump. But we quickly got ourselves sorted out with no off-courses. The rear cross was all right except again I waited too long to tell her what was going on, and she did half of a spin. If we hadn't dropped the bar, though, I think we would have Q'ed. Maybe I set her too close to the jump, or maybe she just misjudged because it was the first time she was jumping that high since our last trial in March, I think. Anyway, I am very, very pleased with how she ran. I am hopeful that we might scrape a Q or two tomorrow. This course was harder than the ones we had in March, and I think this judge in general built difficult courses. There were a LOT of NQs. Also, it seemed to me that the walk-through time was too short.
Okay, enough rambling. I am very tired and I'm going to bed! We have two shots at Jumpers tomorrow (first two classes, so I do have to be there early, argh) and one shot at Tunnelers (at the end of the day, argh!).
When our run finally came, I was mostly so relieved that soon I would get to go home that I thought I wasn't going to be nervous. I did not get that nervous feeling until just before our run, and it disappeared as soon as we started. Part of that was that our potential Q went right out the window as soon as we started because Faith knocked the very first bar. :( Other than that, she was wonderful. She did not get excited while we were waiting. She was perfectly calm getting set up and getting her collar taken off. And she listened very well to me! The course was:
My path is in red and Faith's is in blue. The lines are jumps and the blob is a tunnel. Faith was awesome driving towards the tunnel when I told her to go. I did not have to go as far as I drew my line. The ugly part that I messed up on was the front cross in the middle. This is the same thing we've been working on in class, and I waited too late to tell Faith that the cross was coming. I had to freeze for a minute for her to see where I wanted her to be because she kept going on on the wrong side after the jump. But we quickly got ourselves sorted out with no off-courses. The rear cross was all right except again I waited too long to tell her what was going on, and she did half of a spin. If we hadn't dropped the bar, though, I think we would have Q'ed. Maybe I set her too close to the jump, or maybe she just misjudged because it was the first time she was jumping that high since our last trial in March, I think. Anyway, I am very, very pleased with how she ran. I am hopeful that we might scrape a Q or two tomorrow. This course was harder than the ones we had in March, and I think this judge in general built difficult courses. There were a LOT of NQs. Also, it seemed to me that the walk-through time was too short.
Okay, enough rambling. I am very tired and I'm going to bed! We have two shots at Jumpers tomorrow (first two classes, so I do have to be there early, argh) and one shot at Tunnelers (at the end of the day, argh!).