In The Zone Agility Day 2
Today was MUCH better than yesterday! The only bad thing was that despite the schedule on the website assuring me that Jumpers was going to be the first and second class of the day, they were doing Regular when I got there at the crack of dawn. So I had to wait again (but not as long as before).
First Jumpers run:
This was a great course! We were awesome on this course, if I do say so myself. I set Faith up farther back from the line this time and she did not knock any jumps. I knew this was a Q for sure, but for awhile I did not know where the score tent was or how you looked up your results. But finally I asked someone and she showed me how to do it. I felt dumb because this is not even my first trial! But anyway, we got first place and our second Novice Jumpers Q ever!
Second Jumpers run:
My drawing of this course is wrong. I am sure there were more jumps than I have drawn, but I can't remember where they were. This was the general pattern, though. It was just a big loop. I think this was our easiest course of the weekend. Faith was great on this, but I messed her up by pushing her too far out after I did my rear cross. She went around the next jump. I remembered Karen's advice from our first trial which is to just keep going if your dog messes up because a) you don't want to tell your dog she made a mistake when it was your fault and b) you're not going to make time anyway so you might as well just keep running. But I really wanted Faith's first agility title, so I circled her around. I don't think she minded. Then after we finished it was very suspenseful because I did not know if we had qualified because of time. Finally the results came to the score tent, and lo! we had qualified, won first place again, and gotten our very first title in Novice Jumpers! We were less than four seconds under the maximum course time as opposed to more than eight seconds like in our first run of the day.
Novice Tunnelers:
The blue blobby lines are tunnels. Faith's path is in pink. My path is not shown. It's hard to read Faith's path, so I numbered the tunnels. This was a fun course except that Faith and I were both really tired at this point. We didn't have any sticky spots, although our run did not look nearly as nice as the Elite and Open handlers because I did not try anything tricky like sending Faith into a tunnel from the opposite side of the ring. No, I pretty much ran along with Faith. I did a front cross between 4 and 5 and then again after 10. We Q'ed and won first place again!
So today we Q'ed three for three (and won all of them, too). We were only competing against three or four dogs in the 20+ class, but still. We beat a border collie, an Aussie, and an ACD. Go, Faith! There were two other standard poodles there, but neither of them was as good as mine. One of them was a big brown boy who pranced next to his handler through the whole course and knocked down lots of jumps because he was looking at her instead of where he was going. The other was a black boy who was in a very unflattering clip--a giant mane on the shoulders and tiny skinny stick legs. He was very barky.
I blasted the air conditioning the whole way home while Faith rolled on her back and slept. It was a successful weekend (although hot and tiring and I'm glad I get to sleep in tomorrow).
So now Faith is Wildgayle Leap of Faith RA RL2 FDCh-S NJC CGC.
First Jumpers run:
This was a great course! We were awesome on this course, if I do say so myself. I set Faith up farther back from the line this time and she did not knock any jumps. I knew this was a Q for sure, but for awhile I did not know where the score tent was or how you looked up your results. But finally I asked someone and she showed me how to do it. I felt dumb because this is not even my first trial! But anyway, we got first place and our second Novice Jumpers Q ever!
Second Jumpers run:
My drawing of this course is wrong. I am sure there were more jumps than I have drawn, but I can't remember where they were. This was the general pattern, though. It was just a big loop. I think this was our easiest course of the weekend. Faith was great on this, but I messed her up by pushing her too far out after I did my rear cross. She went around the next jump. I remembered Karen's advice from our first trial which is to just keep going if your dog messes up because a) you don't want to tell your dog she made a mistake when it was your fault and b) you're not going to make time anyway so you might as well just keep running. But I really wanted Faith's first agility title, so I circled her around. I don't think she minded. Then after we finished it was very suspenseful because I did not know if we had qualified because of time. Finally the results came to the score tent, and lo! we had qualified, won first place again, and gotten our very first title in Novice Jumpers! We were less than four seconds under the maximum course time as opposed to more than eight seconds like in our first run of the day.
Novice Tunnelers:
The blue blobby lines are tunnels. Faith's path is in pink. My path is not shown. It's hard to read Faith's path, so I numbered the tunnels. This was a fun course except that Faith and I were both really tired at this point. We didn't have any sticky spots, although our run did not look nearly as nice as the Elite and Open handlers because I did not try anything tricky like sending Faith into a tunnel from the opposite side of the ring. No, I pretty much ran along with Faith. I did a front cross between 4 and 5 and then again after 10. We Q'ed and won first place again!
So today we Q'ed three for three (and won all of them, too). We were only competing against three or four dogs in the 20+ class, but still. We beat a border collie, an Aussie, and an ACD. Go, Faith! There were two other standard poodles there, but neither of them was as good as mine. One of them was a big brown boy who pranced next to his handler through the whole course and knocked down lots of jumps because he was looking at her instead of where he was going. The other was a black boy who was in a very unflattering clip--a giant mane on the shoulders and tiny skinny stick legs. He was very barky.
I blasted the air conditioning the whole way home while Faith rolled on her back and slept. It was a successful weekend (although hot and tiring and I'm glad I get to sleep in tomorrow).
So now Faith is Wildgayle Leap of Faith RA RL2 FDCh-S NJC CGC.