Trial #3, Day 1

Our first time in Open Jumpers, and a complete disaster because I’m an idiot! There’s really a certain level of hilarity in sending your dog over a jump and going “OH NO CRAP” while he’s in the air over the jump because you just realized that you went from #6 to #10… yeeeeah that’s not the right jump in the sequence! No Q, because I’m a moron!! But Auggie does remarkably well with an idiot as a handler. His weaves – 12 of them – were just goooorgeous!
I swear, I’m blonde under all this red.

Standard was an interesting experience. I thought it was easy-peasy after all of that goofiness in Jumpers, but then… some guy is sitting near the table, for some bizarre reason, wearing dark sunglasses. Auggie gets into his sit on the table, and then – and he’s never done this before – TURNS AROUND, sees the guy behind him, and goes “Oh hi!” Off the table he goes, and over to the spotter. What the crap!! He has NEVER gone up to a spotter in his (granted, short) agility career! I finally get him back up on the table, and fail to remember that the dog walk was right behind us. I should have been standing at a different location. When I call him off, instead of going over the jump, he off-courses and takes the dog walk back the other direction.

Now, at the very first Fun Run I ever went to with Auggie… he went up the dog walk. Then he went back up the dog walk. Then back up the dog walk. THEN BACK UP THE DOG WALK. It must have been six times or more than he went back and forth over that dog walk. So I’m almost beside myself with panic, imagining this scenario happening again – this time on an actual course. I would just die from embarrassment… DIE.

So PRAISE the agility gods, I called him to me CLEARLY away from the dog walk and took him back towards the table, then away we go, over the correct jump and on to finish the course.

So much for easy-peasy!

A bit of a rough day for many people. It was an EXTREMELY long day because FAST classes were running, and they went first. We’re still in Novice Standard, and for this trial, JWW came before Standard… so our last run was the very last run of the day. We got there around 9AM and were leaving around 5:30PM. Very, very, very long day for the dogs.
The one positive is that Auggie measured “right at 14” and the judge said “Well, this wicket is a little off. What are you entered in? 12? That’s fine.”
So, hey! We finally got to compete at the 12 inch level!