Memorial Day Agility Weekend, and Georgie’s New Title!
This weekend we drove down to Glen Carbon for three days of agility. Whenever I have a day off work for a holiday, I like to try and squeeze in three days of agility, since it gives me an extra chance to snag some Qs without having to take any vacation days. I’ve been hesitant to go down to Glen Carbon for a long time because it’s a bit far and the hotels aren’t very cheap. I hated to make a big, expensive trip out of it and waste all that money on brand new baby dogs who aren’t quite on their game yet, but my friends wanted me to go, so away we went.
I also decided to enter Auggie in one day, just for fun. Auggie and I haven’t really done any practicing since before Louisville, and being semi-retired, I don’t really care what he does, so it was just for the fun of running my old man. He ran both rings on Sunday and actually had some really nice runs. His jumping wasn’t the greatest since we haven’t done any work, and he knocked the final bar on the triple jump in both rings, and he also decided 11 weave poles were plenty, BUT – he was really running quite fast for Auggie runs. If he had Qd in standard he would have gotten about 10 points, and jumpers would have been about 4 or 5, which might not sound like much, but for a dog who had a career plagued by trying to make SCT, it’s a pretty big deal. The other big deal was I did all of this without using any treats at all with him. All of our warm-up and playing before his runs was done with his shark tug. This is a dog who wasn’t really into tugging for many, many, many years, and only really started to tug when he was six years old. Despite NQs it was really pretty awesome for Auggie, and of course, it’s always the best thing in the world to run my big dog.
Payton and I have spent the past two weeks doing self-control work and some more proofing on contacts. We also did some weave pole work, but that’s sort of frustrating for me because I cannot make the dog miss weave poles in the backyard. He’s excellent about it and I felt like I wasn’t really working on what I needed to be working on by flinging him into 12 weave poles from various difficult angles. Perhaps the weaves were really what we needed to work on, because all weekend long, Payton did not complete a single set of 12 weave poles. He made some entries. He also missed some entries. He did a few poles, and also skipped a few (several.)
On the upside, his startline stays were really great all weekend long. I have been hesitant to do a lot of lead outs with Payton because, in the backyard, he will sometimes decide the fastest way to release is to simply go around the jumps rather than actually taking the jumps in front of him. I hate to blow a run just because I’m trying to do a lead out, and given that my sport of choice is running, sprinting to keep up with my dog is well within my physical abilities, so I haven’t done a lot of them. This weekend I decided to try it, wondering if the extra self-control required to not break a stay might help with control on the rest of the course, too. I can tell you it doesn’t bleed over into self-control on the rest of the course, but he did several nice lead outs for me, including one through a tire jump, which it wasn’t too long ago that we had tire issues. His contacts were also pretty nice. The a-frame wasn’t what I wanted, but I wasn’t getting what I wanted from the a-frame in practice either, and I’ve been considering re-training the a-frame with the Rachel Sanders method to a running a-frame and reserving the 2o2o for the dog walk. He wasn’t called on the a-frame all weekend long, so there’s that. This weekend he actually chose to complete the teeter, waiting for it to tip rather than adopting our last agility weekend’s style of running up the teeter, pausing for about a quarter of a second, then diving off the side because it wasn’t tipping fast enough and he needs to GO GO GO GO! His dog walk, however, which is what I’ve really been working on, was rather nice. The first day he held it properly. The second day we had a minor fiasco at the table and I was a little irritated, so I held him on his contact for a LONG time. The third day I admit I was irritated at him because he didn’t get his weave poles and ran past the dog walk, only issuing one “touch” command as I blew far ahead of him, and he cleared off the down plank without getting anywhere near the yellow. Bad trainer for letting my irritation get to me and failing to try and maintain my own criteria.
A contributing factor may also be that this weekend, I tested out giving him multiple “touch” commands. Part of me hates to do this, because part of me really believes I should only need to give my dog one command for him to respond properly. I don’t have to tell my dogs to “sit” multiple times. I do not have to, nor do I, chatter “stay… stay… stay…” to my dogs to get them to stay. I do not have to tell him “jump jump jump!” So why should I have to tell Payton “Touch, touch, touch” on the agility course? One should be enough.
But the reality is that so far, one has NOT been enough. I also will happily tell my dogs “tunnel tunnel tunnel!!” to really drive and send them to a tunnel. The other part of me doesn’t care about this, remembering an article in Clean Run written by Silvia Trkman about how she talks a lot to her dogs and repeats commands like “tunnel tunnel tunnel.” So why, exactly, should “touch” be any different than “tunnel?” If I say “tunnel tunnel tunnel” to encourage them to drive forward into a tunnel, “touch touch touch” should encourage drive down to the contact. And with only a very small amount of data (three days this weekend), it appears multiple commands to Payton WILL get him into his position. It’s not like I’m trying to be on the World Team or anything anyway, I’m just trying to enjoy a sport with my dog, and if giving him multiple commands is the difference between an NQ and frustration and a Q and success, why shouldn’t I?
So that’s where things stand with Payton at the moment. Still work to do on the contacts and some challenges with weave poles. I will fully admit that excepting the weave poles and some weird table issues, most problems from this weekend were 100% my fault (resulting from bad handling position or one time I set him up too close to the start jump), and there were also things that looked really, really good, and should make me very proud of my young baby dog. I am confident we’ll eventually get there as a team, it’s just going to take time. I still haven’t learned that Payton is not Auggie and I cannot run Payton just like Auggie. There’s a lot of physical muscle memory stuff going on that I need to break from four years of running Auggie and less than a year of running Payton. It will happen, and once it does, I believe we will be beautiful. At this point you can cue Georgie Harrison and start singing “It’s gonna take money, a whole lotta spending money, it’s gonna take plenty of money, to do it right child. It’s gonna take time, a whole lotta precious time, it’s gonna take patience and time to do it, to do it, to do it, to do it, to do it, to do it right child.” YEP.
HOWEVER.
The real exciting moment of this weekend is that Georgie had some phenomenal runs of her own. After picking up the first Open Q in jumpers at our last trial, she followed up her performance by snagging a jumpers Q on Saturday, missing one on Sunday by one refusal, and then grabbing her third and final OAJ leg on Monday. So the baby girly has now blown past her best friend Payton and has her OAJ. She also was one refusal away from her first standard leg on Monday. She’s a very good dog and everybody had great things to say about her. A nice, steady dog. In my head I imagine she’s out on the course singing to Payton “Anything you can do, I can do better!” So in honor of the great little girly, here’s the video of all three of her OAJ qualifying legs:
So big congrats to Georgie! Now she gets to start chasing Excellent legs. She really only needs to get a few kinks ironed out with her weave poles and a few other baby dog things, and otherwise I think she’s going to be quite phenomenal.
So that was our long weekend, some ups and downs, plenty of alcohol was had by me, but overall, I remembered that even a bad weekend at agility is better than a good day at work. Fun was had by all. I’m pretty sure bad baby Pay had the most fun of the whole crew.
Trial weekend for Baby Dogs
Louisville is in the books, my fourth half-marathon is done, and it’s finally time to start moving forward with more training and other trials. So we did! This weekend we trekked our way to Indianapolis to take another crack at some Open Qs.
On Saturday, Payton’s standard run was rather typical for him as of late, completely blown contacts and apparently having no idea what weave poles are. Georgie came out next and had a better run; she got a refusal on the chute and then popped her weave poles at #10, but otherwise had a really nice run. Jumpers was a challenging course; we watched the Excellent/Masters dogs run first and there was a series of jumps in the middle that were causing a lot of dogs to go off-course. Just our luck, that same series of jumps stayed put for the course change down to Open. Payton got to take a crack at it first, and surprisingly, his only issue was (again) crappy weave pole performance. He otherwise navigated the course nicely without biting on any of the off-courses that were bombing a lot of more advanced, talented dogs. While it was frustrating to know he would have had that course if not for this annoying trial weave issue, I walked away from the course reminding myself he WAS successful in a way many other dogs had not managed to be.
Georgie got to come out next. Georgie is the one who is more likely to take off-courses, so this was a fair concern with her. But she navigated the course just fine! Even better – she got all of her weave poles! Baby Georgie snags the VERY FIRST open Q out of both young dogs. Way to go Georgie!!
Sunday we were a little delayed in getting checked out of our hotel, and as a result we ended up getting to the trial site just a couple minutes too late for my walkthrough. Even worse, Payton was the third dog in the ring for Open Jumpers. I didn’t have much time to do anything except watch a couple people ahead of me run their dogs. I watched a guy I know run his young portie and decided I was going to steal his handling maneuvers, even though it wasn’t how I would have normally handled the course, because I didn’t really have any other options to choose how to handle it at that point in time. So out I went with Payton. Our first challenge was a tunnel where the correct entry was about as likely as the wrong entry – he got the correct entry. Away we went around the rest of the course, looping back to the weave poles… and he got his entry. AND he got all twelve of them. Holy cow! So he DOES know how to weave, right? At that point it was just making sure I didn’t screw up my handling and make him drop a bar or pull off a jump… and he did it. Big Bad Baby Dog got HIS very Open Q.
Miss Georgie didn’t have such a great run, as I let her get out a little to angle her to the correct tunnel entry and she ended up taking the jump ahead of her instead of taking the tunnel. But otherwise she had a nice run and did a good job.
Standard was another mess for Payton; at one point I remember clearly thinking to myself “He is WAY too amped up right now.” He blew all his contacts spectacularly, and the lovely weaves from that morning were non-existent. Well, at least he’s consistently inconsistent.
Georgie’s standard run was pretty identical to Saturday; her contacts were certainly better than Payton’s. She did get a refusal on the tunnel, then a second at the weaves, and then did a peculiar new thing of popping out of the weaves at the last pole rather than skipping the last two as is her normal bad-weaves habit. So no Q for either puppy in the afternoon.
Overall it wasn’t a horrible weekend; some good things happened for both dogs. Georgie went the entire weekend without visiting anyone in the ring. Payton’s Saturday JWW run was quite nice even though he didn’t get his weaves. And both came home with their first Open Qs. My Q rate for the entire weekend was 2/8, but still, good things did happen.
Baby steps with the baby dogs… baby steps. Baby dogs.
I did get video of all the runs, but the only video I’ve bothered editing and uploading is Payton’s clean run Q in JWW. Not the smoothest, given I didn’t have a chance to walk it, but an ugly Q still counts as a Q.
Springfield Agility Wrap-up
Agility in Springfield started out good, got weird, got better, then got worse… then got mostly better, then ended on a good note.
To start, we arrived Friday morning and got set up. Georgie ran in jumpers and snagged that last Q she needed to get her NAJ title. Yay little girly!! What a great way to start the weekend. We decided not to move her up for the rest of the weekend, mostly because she doesn’t have 12 weave poles. I debated moving her up and letting her see some tricky Open courses but not even attempting the weaves, but we decided it was more important to let her see some more Novice courses and just gain more confidence.
Next up was open jumpers. I pulled Payton out of his crate before his run… and promptly freaked out a bit because his face looked SUPER puffy. I asked my CVT friend to look at it and she agreed he was puffy, and thought he had some kind of lumpy nodule on the right side of his muzzle. After some quick discussion, I popped him a Benadryl. The puffiness went down pretty quickly, and he was in a good mood and playing, so I ran him and he seemed happy and fine. After about a half hour, the puffiness went down, and by his standard runs later he was back to normal. We thought maybe just sinuses from environmental allergies? Though I thought there was a possibility that there was a spider in his crate (I had just picked them up from my house Thursday night and loaded them into the car, and they were in my garage where they are definitely spiders.) and maybe a spider bit him.
Georgie then picked up her first ever standard Q, getting her first ever “double-Q,” so it was a good day for Georgie. Payton NQ’d both his runs, but I cut him some slack since his face was all puffy that morning.
That evening we had the great Hotel Tire Building and practiced the tire in the hotel room, and I felt better for what the next day held.
At 2AM Saturday morning, Payton woke me up by jumping in the bed and pressing himself against me, obviously upset. He kept shaking his head and was holding one ear off to the side – his right ear was bothering him. By 2:30AM, I didn’t know what do; he wasn’t settling down while holding him, stroking him, trying to physically prevent him from shaking his head. By that point, his fussing woke up my mom, so I turned the lights on and started trying to come up with another idea. I tried trimming the hair around his ear in case it was bothering him – nope. I tried cleaning it out with a cotton ball, and didn’t see anything gross in there… but when I really looked down inside the ear canal, I could see spots of blood. That’s never a good sign. So I pulled out the phone book to try and find the local emergency vet. I called and asked their advice, giving them the history with what happened with his puffy face, and they guessed possibly still allergies and recommended more Benadryl. I was of course happy to try it and avoid an emergency vet visit, so I gave him another Benadryl and tucked him into bed with me to hold him and see if he would calm down.
For a few minutes around 3:15 or so, it seemed like he was going to settle down… then he started panting again and shaking his head non-stop. At 3:30 it had been a half hour since the Benadryl and he was still pretty clearly in distress, so I put my clothes on and drove to the e-vet.
They had to sedate him to look down in his ear canal to make sure there wasn’t any kind of debris in there; there was nothing there, but she thought there might have been a small tear on his eardrum. So we were sent off with some ABX and some pain killers/mild sedative, and there’s really nothing else we can do except wait for him to get better. She said to have my regular vet re-check him in a week. We returned to the hotel at 4:30 in the morning and he was still quite drowsy from the sedative, so I tucked him into a crate and he slept for most of the night without further issue.
Saturday he seemed okay in the morning, but about mid-afternoon he was getting fidgety again. I gave him some Rescue Remedy and Traumeel and that seemed to help for a bit and got us through the afternoon. During his runs, he ran with as much joie de vivre as he always has and seemed quite pleased with himself – possibly the excitement made for a nice distraction – so I decided to run him instead of pulling. No Q’s, but I hardly expected a lot from him. Georgie ran as well but got no Q’s on Saturday either. He started fidgeting more in the evening, but I pushed it until 9pm to give him his meds again, hoping the mild sedative pill would help him sleep again. He was clearly in a foul mood, pouting in the crate the entire evening. I was exhausted, not having slept much myself the night before, and hated that he wasn’t feeling well and I couldn’t do anything to help him feel better, and it was COLD AS BALLS at the trial and I hate the cold, and I just really wanted to go home. But I’d already paid for my hotel and my runs, so I deemed to tough it out.
Sunday morning, Georgie started the morning with a nice run in novice jumpers, picking up an extra Q. Payton had a fair run in open jumpers but acted like he had no clue what weave poles were, and also shook his head a few times during his run, so I was kind of upset. Since it was quite cool out, I packed up and decided to work out of the car for our last runs so I would be ready to just put the dogs back in the car after their standard runs and go home. I took everybody on a nice long walk around the fairgrounds because there were hours to go between runs. Georgie’s standard run was first and she proved three days might just be too much for her. Payton’s run was next (with one dog between us, yay for Novice) and we had a bobble at the tunnel with Payton deciding the far (wrong) side of the tunnel was the preferred side, but instead of just bagging the run I stuck it out and got him in the right side of the tunnel. He stuck his contacts the best he had done all weekend, decided the table wasn’t worth getting up on right away, but ran the rest of the course pretty nicely.
I left the ring thinking the tunnel had done us in, but a competitor I know was outside the ring and said “No, I’m pretty sure that was a Q.” So instead of putting the dogs in the car and driving off annoyed and ribbon-less, I stuck around to wait and see…
And sure enough, there it was. Payton got the last Novice Standard Q he needed to secure his NA title.
Hurray!!! We aren’t entered in any more trials and probably won’t do anything until next spring, so it was nice to wrap up the season by finally cleaning up that novice title. Payton is officially out of Novice!
Both dogs have MASSIVE homework lists for this winter and so much to do. I also have the tiny matter of a half-marathon in April to prepare for, training for which has taken a backseat to working Payton. Now I will hopefully be able to strike a better balance and get both things done, and by the time we get back at it in the spring, things will be cleaner, faster, and much much better!
I haven’t edited videos yet because I am still exhausted, but glad to have picked up two titles this weekend. Payton is also feeling much, much better now, shaking his head far less, playing and throwing toys at me, and happy to curl up on the floor and get his belly rubbed instead of sulking in a crate. Georgie, however, is rather mad because I won’t let her jump on Payton’s head and chew his ears. Poor poor Georgie.
Indy Trial Wrap-up
Well, Friday night brought on some excitement. I fell while bringing some things in from the car to our hotel room and twisted my ankle. Saturday morning I made an emergency run to Wal-Mart and bought some athletic tape to wrap it up because it still hurt, even though I slept with a pillow under my foot to keep it elevated. Even better – as I was packing up to leave the hotel and MAKE the emergency Wal-Mart run, I realized I was having a migraine aura. Awesome!! I took a migraine med and then a fistful of Ibuprofen, and happily, within about an hour, I was feeling back to normal (minus my sore ankle.) I had to wonder if it’s a GOOD thing or a BAD thing that I know how to wrap my ankle. Yay me for being a distance runner!
So Saturday was… interesting. Very interesting.
Georgie would have her NAJ after this weekend except I was stupid and sent her over a wrong jump. The ending of her course was the same as Payton’s for open jumpers, except in Payton’s course you took THIS jump then that, that, that one… and in her course you just did that, that, and that jump. Well, I sent her over the THIS jump. Bad bad handler ripped Georgie out of a Q and what would have otherwise been her title, because she got another jumpers Q on Sunday.
P came home from all three days with no ribbons and a handful of rotten performances, some for reasons that are just due to inexperienced baby dog, and some due to… I don’t really know what reasons. I wish I was able to point more clearly at what was going on (or what wasn’t going on.) The real plus I came away with for P this weekend: he ran his open jumpers course on Sunday at 5.91 YPS, and that speed is brought down by having to redo his weave entry (all that work on weave pole performance this past couple of weeks, and only ONE TIME did he get his entry the first time – and it was after he already NQ’d his run so OF COURSE) and a second spinning refusal later. Holy crap. I knew it felt really fast, but I didn’t realize until I looked at the times exactly how fast. SCT was 43 sec, his time was 23 sec. The closest time after that was a small border collie at 31 sec. If Payton had run clean and smooth he would have smoked the course under 20 sec.
So just a, um, minor problem of learning how to control the wild man. I’m hoping time and experience will shape things up. Some lady walked past us as I was taking P out to potty and she said “Oh, there’s that wild dog!!” Yeeeeep, that he is. That he is. Sunday on the drive home I announced I want a shirt that says PAYTON SUCKS. And I just saw that AKC is considering rules that will allow people to wear clothing with their dog’s name on it. PERFECT.
Editing the videos together was a little disheartening because they look worse to me than they felt at the time, but I’m probably just being far too critical of two baby dogs.
Georgie completely refused to do the chute this weekend:
And then there’s Payton…
Indy Trial, Day 1
Georgie got her first Q today! She took 1st and Q’d in JWW.
Payton bit on some kind of wonky angle in open jumpers and ran around a jump, we’re not sure what was going on but a lot of dogs even in excellent (the sequence of jumps was the same) were running out. Also missed his weave entry because there’s a huuuuuge fan spinning at this place and it basically causes strobes on the floor, so he came out of the tunnel into the strobes and had to go straight into the weaves – no go. Nailed them the second time though. Darn refusals!
Standard was a mess, it had been a long day and neither dog wanted to do the weave poles with the off course a-frame staring them in the face. Georgie was a bit of an off-course mess (still did really great for a baby dog!) but she stayed on her teeter today!
Ughhhhhh I just really wanted P to get his last standard Q, because I literally ran Payton, ran upstairs to put him back in his crate, grabbed Georgie, went downstairs, shoveled five pieces of hot dog in her mouth, then ran Georgie. I wanted him out of Novice so I don’t have two in the same class anymore! We’ll get it eventually. (BUT I WANT IT NOOOOOOW.)
Georgie’s Agility Debut
The most amazing princess puppy had her agility debut! Check out her video below.
My mom admitted to me she was disappointed Georgie didn’t get any Qs, but I don’t see anything in her runs to be disappointed with. I am very proud and pleased with Georgie. She did a lot of things I knew were potential trouble spots for her debut: she did the tire instead of trying to go around/under it. She got on the rubberized contacts and stayed on them instead of being disturbed by the texture and bailing. She got her weaves. She didn’t drop any bars. She did tunnels splendidly! And she even did the chute despite not wanting to go through it the first time. So many good things she did, I just can’t find it in myself to be at all upset or disappointed in what she DIDN’T do. Even though she didn’t ride the teeter all the way down and got an E for that.
For a baby dog who has been mostly trained by somebody who has never actually done agility before, and who ONE WEEK ago didn’t want to even go halfway up a teeter set all the way to the ground, I think she’s a rock star. Little Georgie is entered in two more trials this year before she gets to break for the winter, so we’ll see how she shapes up over the next several weeks!
Payton’s Second Agility Trial
The weather for Payton’s second agility trial, and first ever outdoor trial, was surprisingly beautiful, even a bit hot on Sunday (and I came home with a pretty serious sunburn on my neck, backs of my ears, and arms – yeouch!) It broke the pattern, or “curse,” of the local agility trial, which traditionally calls for sub-50 degree temperatures, high winds, and rain if you’re really lucky! We were all quite delighted and I will accept my sunburn as penance for forgetting to grab my bottle of sunscreen.
Here’s the video of Payton’s runs:
Saturday Payton got his NAJ title. He also got his very first Novice Standard leg. I was pretty stunned, because going into the trial I expected a bit of a disaster for being outside. Once again the rules included “don’t pee on anything.” Happily, he peed on nothing! And came home with his first “Double Q” (which of course truly means nothing sub-Masters.)
His Open Jumpers on Sunday run looks more like the Payton I am used to! THAT is my baby dog. The dog who’s running around in all these other runs and picking up Qs and blue ribbons and stuff, I dunno who that is. Poor guy got popped in the face by a weave pole in jumpers and was quite startled, but I was very proud that I just pulled him back to start over and he got it done instead of staying offended. His collection obviously needs more work so he doesn’t barrel into the weave poles and pop himself in the face anymore…
His standard run was great and he came home with another first place and a second leg towards his NA!
Overall, I am very pleased with Payton. He needs more control, but that is something I’ve been noticing as we practice – as he’s gotten more and more confident in various obstacles and sequences he’s gotten faster and the control is slipping a bit. Self-control has been a constant with Payton since I brought him home and will likely be a challenge his entire life. Luckily, I am up for the challenge. I have a whole host of things to work on with him this fall and winter, and hopefully he will be a really great dog come spring (and hopefully I’ll suddenly come into money so I can trial him more often.) After Saturday, he was getting a small fan club. My heart was glowing with how many people thought he looked good, was coming along really great, and had very complimentary things to say about the baby dog. We are all very proud of him and excited for his future!
Baby Payton’s First Agility Trial
The time leading up to this trial was… emotional.
I went through “We might actually be able to pull this off!” to “OH GOD HE WILL BE TERRIBLE WE ARE GOING TO BE LAUGHED OUT OF THE RING” and all kinds of turmoil. A friend asked me “What’s the worst thing that can happen?”
And I didn’t answer because if I said it out loud, it was going to make me cry – the worst thing that can happen is that Payton is not Auggie. He is not Auggie and he will never be Auggie and it is unfair to Payton, and to myself, to continually compare the two.
“He is just a baby,” people said. “I never expect baby dogs to strike awe into people their first time out!”
Auggie did. Auggie’s first run ever. Remember? “One day that dog is going to be awesome,” from a total stranger.
He came home with a first and Q in his first ever jumpers run. It was a clean run, I still remember the feeling as I staggered out of the ring with my dog in my arms. My amazing Auggie.
And now? Now I have Payton.
I decided that we needed to just go and have fun. It’s just expensive practice, I reminded myself. All I want is for Payton to go in the ring, take a few of the jumps I ask him to take, not pee on anything, and also to get his weave poles.
The morning of our trial, I asked Auggie if it was okay that I was taking Payton to the trial instead. I also asked him if he had any advice for his baby brother.
I took Payton outside before his run. I had sliced up hot dog I was feeding him. I told him not to pee on anything. I asked if he could please remember how to do weave poles because I have video evidence that he DOES know how to do them, so please do them.
As I entered the ring I remembered what a friend said. “You only have one first trial with your dog.”
I gave him a kiss, then a second one.
Then we ran.
And you can’t see it in the video but I started crying right after the video cuts off. Because I couldn’t believe it. I really just wanted him to get his weaves… and he ran the whole course and he Q’d and everything.
I was crying and everybody kept saying “Oh, good job!” and I kept blubbering “He’s my baby dog!!” and took him outside and fed him the rest of his hot dog crying and telling him “You did so good! You were so good! You’re such a good boy!”
I just never believed it would happen. Sometimes I would be working with him and think “you know, maybe he COULD pull it off.” But I didn’t really think he would.
I didn’t care what happened the second day. If it was anything like Auggie’s first trial, the second day would be a disaster. But I really didn’t care. After that? After so much more than I ever dreamed possible? Heck, short of peeing in the ring Payton could do whatever he wanted.
\
So I says to him, “I don’t even Payton. I mean… I just don’t even.”
I hoped it would happen. But I never dreamed it really would.
I better get these weave poles cleaned up because I might need them sooner than I thought. Wow. Admittedly today’s weave pole bobble was ENTIRELY my fault. When I trained Auggie to do weave poles I trained him to do it by me chattering WEAVE WEAVE WEAVE the whole time he was in the poles. With Payton I did not do that. I just say “go weave.” And when I chatter he’s like “I’M ALREADY IN THE WEAVE POLES WHY DO YOU KEEP TELLING ME TO WEAVE I GOT IT OKAY???” And I caught myself walking the course yesterday and reminded myself to SHUT UP, but today I did not, and instead of just “go weave” I said “Go weave weave weave weave…” and realized what I had just done.
BAD TRAINER.
I guess whatever advice Auggie had for his baby brother was good advice.
Or maybe I just have the best Payton in the world.
Payton CGC
Wednesday I happened to be browsing around on a local club’s Facebook page and noticed they were having CGC tests the following night. $10 if you weren’t enrolled in a class (which I am not.) Hmm, $10 isn’t a whole lot… I’ll take Payton!
Immediately after I made that decision I started to panic. What am I doing?! This is the dog who sometimes spontaneously decides he hates random stuff that has always been present, like the bag hanging on the coat rack, or if we move something five inches he thinks it’s an intruder in the house and must be barked at. Or we’re out on a walk and WHAT IS THAT ROCK DOING THERE. or THAT PICNIC BENCH. Or THE FIRE HYDRANT.
And then of course sometimes I see stuff that I think “oh Payton is going to think this is bizarre and bark at it” and he completely ignores it.
But it’s just the CGC right? Right? No big deal… right?
Thursday after work I went through the house and found every weird thing I could come up with to play “Look At That” with him. This is a fairly regular game with him; I regularly patrol the Dollar Spot at Target or the Dollar Store and buy anything that looks bizarre or I think he will find weird so we can play. I found a wind-up t-rex that my parents put in my stocking years ago. This Payton did not like but worked through it quite easily. Next I found the old Bumbleball that I got Auggie when he was a puppy and turned it on – that was a piece of cake! Then I grabbed a plastic bag with tennis balls in it and shook that. Who cares! Threw a handful of cookies on the floor. Nope, you can’t fool me.
Okay, cool.
I’M STILL PANICKING.
My next move was to load up Payton in the car and drive to PetSmart so we could practice in a different environment. This is a little bit of cheating because Pay has been to PetSmart a good handful of times, but still, sometimes he sees A Bad Thing at PetSmart and you never know what kind of people or dogs you’ll encounter there, so it’s worth the practice. We did see a man in a wheelchair while there, which he didn’t care about, so that was pretty cool. He did amazing in the store, I was feeling pretty good.
Put him back in the car and he started flipping out at a fire hydrant he saw on the side of the road as we were driving. *facepalm*
We got to the club and got out of the car to a line of people waiting for the doors to open, so I took Payton off in the grass and pottied him and started working. He was doing amazing again so we went closer to the line, where people had dogs freaking out and barking and lunging at other dogs. GREAT. Played more Look At That and he was awesome.
Then we had to get into the building when the doors opened, which meant we had to get actually IN LINE – with all those dogs who were spazzing at other dogs. And spazz dogs make Payton a spazz. I’m not making excuses for my dog, reacting to a reactive dog isn’t a free pass – Auggie doesn’t react to reactive dogs, for example – but “other dogs” aren’t Payton’s, trigger, it’s “other dogs wigging at me.”
My solution was to simply pick him up and hold him until we were in the building and we had more space. I wasn’t going to leave him in line with other dogs stressing around him, making him stressed out. He wasn’t completely calm in my arms but he was a good deal less stressed than if I had left him on the ground, and reducing his stress level to manage his threshold was my goal. Sometimes you have to manage a situation until you have trained through it, so management was my solution at that point in time.
Once we got inside and got my paperwork, I got us settled down in a chair in the corner where we were mostly away from other people and other dogs, and started working on getting him to calm back down. While I filled out my form, Payton had a I DO NOT KNOW WHAT THAT IS I DON’T LIKE IT moment – at the frickin’ CLIPBOARD I was using the fill out my paperwork on. Well this does not bode well. On the other hand, I was able to get him to eat cookies off the clipboard and was able to pick it up and carry it back to the registration desk without him flipping out at it, so we were able to work through it pretty easily.
We watched other people practice for a while and once the floor had cleared out a bit, it was Payton’s turn to practice.
Two things for me to come away from our practice with: One, my dog is not the most reactive dog in the building. Two, my dog may not have the tightest heel in the world, but he does have the most enthusiastic, attentive, happy heel – especially in comparison to some of the other dogs. And this was around OTHER DOGS going spazzo which normally would have him be flipping out. Yes, we were practicing with a handful of cookies (and later with cookies sitting on my chair across the ring) but thinking back to how he reacted at the rally trial in May when I couldn’t even get my dog’s attention back even with cookies right in front of his face, he has definitely made progress.
At this point, I sat down in my chair and thought “It doesn’t matter if he doesn’t get his CGC tonight. This is a win. This is worth it.” I was so immensely proud and he hadn’t even really done anything yet.
Then it was our turn in the ring. Turns out the evaluator was the same evaluator who CGC’d Auggie! We didn’t have a perfect heel in the actual ring, he got more distracted once we were “in the ring.” But he did everything reasonably well – and he was AWESOME in the distraction test! I patted him and told him he was a good boy and he didn’t even really think about reacting to the distractions. The lady dropped a bag full of soda cans pretty much right in front of him, and he just looked offended, like “Why are you throwin’ stuff?” Hardly even looked at the guy hobbling around us on crutches.
The guy who took Payton for supervised separation came back and said “This is the most talkative dog in the world.” Um, uh oh, LOL. Apparently he took Payton in the room and shut the door, and Payton looked at him, muttered something, then turned back to the door and muttered at the door. And kept muttering back and forth. Like “C’mon. We should go back out there. This is boring!” That is apparently NOT a fail, but it was pretty hilarious. Yes, Payton does talk quite a bit. He’s rather obnoxious, I know.
So my Pay has his very first ribbon! I know it’s just the CGC, it’s not like we’ve done anything amazing… but I can’t help being proud when I was anticipating Mr. Horrible Meltdown to come out and play and send us home with me in tears.
YAY PAYTON!
Agility and Rally weekend
This weekend I took Auggie down to an agility trial. I saw they also had rally, so I went ahead and entered us in both. I would rather do both one weekend than have to travel specifically just for rally, and there’s only a rally trial locally twice a year, so why not?
I blew our Rally Advanced A run on Saturday. I practiced pivots in the hotel room the night before and thought I knew how to signal them, but when I got in the ring the next morning, I decided to tuck my arm in like you do in obedience and forgot that I needed to signal Auggie for the pivot. So he didn’t pivot with me. Also, I forgot when I did the moving call front then forward that even if it’s a moving call front then forward the dog still has to SIT when they front. Durp durp. I was so focused on the moving/forward part I didn’t make him sit. The only thing I can partially blame on Auggie is we had the stand then handler walks around the dog, and when I reached down to give Auggie the signal for stand, he immediately thought I was going to signal “down” and threw himself into a down. I could have backed up and then repeated the sign, but I didn’t think about it, so I just stood him and carried on, which meant I failed the exercise because the dog added an extra “part” into the sign. Oh well. The judge was very nice and gave us a few tips.
We Q’d the next day because I decided to screw having my arm tucked in and handled far differently. He was WAY revved up because we were also doing agility, and the way the timing worked, we basically did agility and then went right over to rally – his brain was definitely not in controlled heeling mode, so it was messy messy messy, but I wanted to at least come home with one Q, so whatever I guess. In November I will probably enter us in the local rally trial (unless it’s the same weekend I’m out of town at agility) where all we do is rally, so hopefully he will be in the right mentality and we can get it done without being so messy. The judge told us afterwards that we did a much better job the second day. I thought it was a better job the first day, LOL, even though it wasn’t a Q. Oh well.
Agility was the most important part of the weekend even though I knew I wasn’t guaranteed any Q’s and sort of doubted if I’d get any. Auggie had a clean jumpers run on Saturday, but didn’t make time because the course was wheeled so tight and he’s not running fast for me right now. He knocked the triple in standard which is my fault. Sunday standard was first and we just barely squeaked by under time, so that’s #2 towards his masters standard title. The mystery is jumpers, where he made time by plenty. We ended up with 7 PACH points. I think the scribe may have recorded our time incorrectly, but I have no way of knowing, because everybody was packing up or had already left so nobody was watching to tell me if he really was running that fast, and of course nobody recorded the run for me so we had no way to look and find out. But the course was a very fun, fast course, so it is possible he really ran it that fast… I just have no idea. But, as we say, the agility gods giveth and they taketh away, so in this case I seem to have gotten a gift.
So Auggie is 2/10 for MXP, 4/10 for MJP, and 1/20 for his PACH. And also he only needs 741 more PACH points. HAHAHAHAHA. Yeah I think we need to just put the PACH dream to bed. We’ll get his masters titles and then run him just for fun. I still fully intend to try and work through his jumping problems and hopefully that will boost his confidence enough that he will start running faster, but who knows what will happen? I suppose if his confidence returns full-force and he starts running courses at trials the way he is capable I might change my mind, but for now, I think it’s just time to put the dream away. The odd thing is, it doesn’t really hurt the way I thought it would. I guess I sort of knew, in the back of my head, that this was coming and have had plenty of time to cope with the reality of it.
Or maybe it just helps that I know there is a puppy baking in the oven, and I may very soon be having a chance to try this all over again. Auggie is a great dog and I love him very much. I’m not going to love him any more or any less if he gets an agility champion title. It’s a little disappointing to not be able to shoot for the moon with him, but I will soon have another one to go after the dream with, so that eases the disappointment. And meanwhile Auggie just gets to be my super special little lovey boy!
January 15th & 16th 2011 Trial
Here is video of our runs! Apologies they are not that great, my mom was camerawoman again and until I can train her to record better, this is what we get!
Pretty happy with our runs overall even though we only Q’d 2/4. His times (YPS) were good each run including the NQ runs. Not where I really want them and definitely not as fast as he can be, but it’s a definite improvement over a year ago.
His jumping was terrible in our first run but it started to improve through the next three runs. I can’t say I’m surprised since we haven’t been able to do hardly any practice. I got in a few days worth between finding out we were going to be in the trial and then getting just enough slick snow on the ground that he actually slipped and faceplanted – hard – Monday. Tuesday I took him to the chiropractor and he was out of alignment in his shoulder, elbow, and wrist, which he isn’t usually… and she said even his jaw was a little out of alignment. So no more practice for us after that because there was just enough snow on the ground to make it slick and I wasn’t going to risk him getting hurt. Also no more trials until Louisville in March so hopefully we’ll get enough of a thaw I can work with him and improve his jumping plenty before then.
Also, I don’t own a triple, and I need one. The triple in the standard run Sunday I knew was going to be a problem for him based on the angle AND the fact that the a-frame was right there like “hellooo, come run up me!!” and it turned out to be a problem for both his brother AND his dad too, so I’m not really surprised by that one – but the triple on Saturday shouldn’t really have happened, and if I owned one and we were able to practice with it, I would have had a Q that day. But oh well. I can’t do anything about it now except to build myself a triple and get to work.
I was sort of surprised Sunday when he decided to off-course to the a-frame instead of taking the dog walk. He used to love the a-frame, but we had an issue one time where a judge, wearing clothing that AKC highly recommends they do not wear, was standing RIGHT in his way by the a-frame and he refused it… and then developed buggies with the a-frame and refused it for multiple trials after that. So I was actually kind of glad to see him off-course to it. I know that sounds weird, but it’s the truth. I started laughing and telling him he was so bad, and when I brought him back and he tried to off-course it again I wanted to crack up hysterically. It was just so funny to me. And I know there are people out there who DIE when that stuff happens and get SOOOO mad at their dogs, and there I was going “You are SO bad, you bratface, bad bad bad,” and laughing. I know a lot of people were laughing at me but I’m sure there were people who were horrified that I was so amused by it all.
But the truth of it is that every time he does something like that – or like he did in Glen Carbon where he blew his down contact on the dog walk – I can’t do anything but laugh, because it symbolizes a return to the dog he used to be. As long as he is running with joy, I can’t be angry. We’ve been through too much and worked too hard to get him to start returning to that joyful dog that every sign I get that he is developing into the dog I want him to be, even if it’s “bad,” even if it costs us Q’s, is a reason for ME to be joyful too, ribbons be damned.
And even if it takes us five years to snag the QQ’s we need for a PAX – or even if we never manage it – if I can’t get us there with smiles on our faces and joy in our hearts, then it’s just not worth it.
Obedience Trial Fail
I told everybody after the fact that Auggie added yet another BD leg today.
Except the only problem is that BD is not actually an AKC title… and it just means BAD DOG.
What a BRAT. The first day, I’m told his heel was wonderful, to which I replied “Except for that time he was ON THE WRONG SIDE.” I took a right turn and he decided to skirt around and was on my right side instead. Of course I was halfway across the ring before I realized. And there was a halt in the middle there and I stopped and he sat like three feet from me. When we got to the other side of the ring and did an about turn, I told him “HEEL” again and he got back where he needed to be. I don’t know how he got on the wrong side. They told me he was watching me the entire time but I think he must have taken his eyes off me when I turned and that’s how he ended up on the wrong side.
But he totally blew it with the stand for exam. For one thing, I stood him and said “ST-” and before I could get out “-AY” he was sitting down. $%&&(%@*%. So I stood him up again and this time he stayed standing. When the judge touched his head he was fine, but when she went for his back, he danced over to the side. And when I went back towards him, he was dancing in a circle or something. I could have killed him.
And then of course I went in for the group sits and downs which was a complete waste of time anyway since we already NQ’d, and he was doing fine with his sit-stay until the dog next to him got up and started wandering the ring. He got up and FOLLOWED her, nose glued to her butt. ($&@*(*($&@&$@ HORNBALL!! Sooooo we didn’t even get to see how many times he might have rolled over in the down-stays.
Ugh.
The second day, he wanted to greet the judge for the SFE. Stupid stupid stupid overly friendly dog! At least he stood still when I walked back to him this time instead of doing a stupid circle dance.
Also Auggie thinks calling to front and then going to finish is stupid and he would rather just do it all the first time. Which is ANNOYING because I NEVER call him to heel position, it’s ALWAYS to front. Dumb dog has the game figured out and wants to play by his own rules.
He checked out on me two seconds before the long sit was done. He literally got up and the judge said “return to your dogs” immediately after. AAAAAUGH. So again, we didn’t get to find out if he was indeed going to start rolling over during the long downs.
At least the judge the second day thought we were funny. At once point during the heel free, I stopped and Auggie sat, and the judge said “forward.” I started forward… Auggie did not. I looked over my shoulder and said to him, “So, are you coming, or not?” And he leapt up and ran after me back into heel. He did a few other snotty things and after the call to front fiasco and I put Auggie’s lead back on, I was laughing at my little brat and told him he was such a bad dog, and the judge said “no, no! I like you!” I suppose a comedy act like Auggie and I is probably rare in obedience. As long as a judge has a sense of humor I always seem to make them laugh… too bad there’s no award for Best Comedy Act. Kinda like at an agility trial I was at where I would have taken first for Loudest Handler.
I honestly can’t decide if Auggie thinks this game is stupid and I should call it quits. I wonder if part of the problem is we’re at the same site we’ve done agility at for years. We pull in and he flips out thinking we get to play agility, and then we go do a one minute sit stay instead. If I were Auggie, I’d feel ripped off, too. He apparently does well at heeling off lead (though he’s definitely not as tight as I’d prefer) so I’m thinking next time I get the chance to do obedience, I will also enter the next level up in rally. At least that part of it he seems to enjoy. It’s this whole “standing still” and “don’t move” nonsense he has a problem with.
Agility today – Bloomington, May 29-31st 2010
I am having a hard time putting it into words.
First of all, we had a three day agility trial, Saturday-Monday. On Saturday, Auggie got the last Q for his OJP so I moved him up into Excellent A JWW. It was a surreal feeling to finally be able to move my dog into Excellent.Β I asked J if she could think of a good reason not to move him up, and she couldn’t think of one, and I couldn’t either… so up he went.
On Sunday, he got his first ever Excellent Q.
Today he also Q’d in Excellent Jumpers, so that’s TWOΒ already down towards him AJP –Β but that’s not really the highlight of the day.
He hadΒ no Q’s in Open Standard all weekend. Saturday he didn’t even really run. He went back to the start twice because I’m 99% sure he thought I threw hot dog down on the ground and he wanted to go back and eat it (he saw meΒ throw his leash down.) So I just pulled him and didn’t run.
Sunday he went past the table and then froze next to it and stood there smelling it for probably 30 seconds. He would NOT get on the table. So finally I passed it by and went on. The buzzer then sounded for max time, so I turned, yelled for him, and made a mad dash for the last obstacle, which happened to be a tire. Auggie took off with me. And it was beautiful. Top speed running and a gorgeous jump through the tire.
He gets a pass for Sunday, because it was REALLY hot all weekend and he tried, but it was too hot – and also because we suspect there was a bitch in heat being run out there and she got on the table, and that’s why all these dogs (including Auggie, of COURSE)Β kept smelling it obsessively.
But today.
Today, for one thing, I almost put him over the wrong jump. He wasn’t really coming with me, and finally I realized I was asking him to come over the wrong jump. Oops. LOL.
Then he came off the a-frame… and nearly off-coursed to the dog walk. I yelled “Auggie… Auggie… AUGGIE DON’T YOU DARE.” Everybody laughed hysterically (I think even the judge laughed) but he DID come back to me. Then he blew past the table and took his sweet time coming back to me.
So I had been thinking… if he was screwing around, if he knocked a bar, if he was off coursing… I was just going to kick it into high gear, run as fast as I could, and he either kept up or he didn’t. So he was sitting on the table and I was looking at him thinking there’s no way we had a Q going, what with the two delays as well as a refusal at the table, and I thought “Okay you bratface. Now you’re really gonna get it.”
The judge finished the table count and I flung him into the weaves. Through the weaves.
Then I ran.
This is, in theory, a bad thing to do to Auggie, because if I get too far out he panics, thinks he needs to catch up, jumps WAY early, and tends to crash jumps because he’s freaking out trying to catch up. I blew a Q one weekend because I started running fast to the end, and before he even took off I realized what I was doing and what it, in turn, would do to Auggie – and sure enough, he crashed the last jump on the course and I could kick myself for blowing that Q!
But it’s just what I decided to do today.Β I wasn’t worrying about the Q because he’d already blown it for me.
So we leave the weaves, and Auggie comes over the triple jump. I pretty much expected he’d crash it. Except he didn’t. And then he zips into the chute. And I was yelling for him to come out of the end of the chute and waiting a half-second to help him get over the next jump – his breeder was watching and says he beat me to the jump, he came zipping out of that chute so fast. Next was the dog walk and I am bellowing “WALK IT WALK IT GO GO GO GO GO” and I’m racing him to the end of the dog walk. I beat him to the bottom. He comes down the dog walk and I gave him just enough time to hit his down contact, then I turn, and it’s basically a straight line of three jumps to the finish line… and I’m sprinting it.
And oh my God, here comes Auggie, right with me. Like a bolt of lightning, he is FLYING, and he’s jumping, and it’s awesome.
We didn’t Q.
But he didn’t drop a single bar.
And it was amazing. I keep thinking about it and I want to cry. Auggie used to run like that. The first time we ever ran, I staggered out of the ring with him in my arms and I heard some person say “One day, that dog is going to be awesome.” But he has had so many roadblocks and has taken so many confidence hits that he doesn’t run like that anymore, and I’m left trying to figure out how to restore my dog’s confidence so I can try to regain some of what he used to have. And today, I saw it, right next to me. My little dog broke free and for just a moment he was the dog he used to be. And he was awesome, and I am so proud of him and I don’t CARE that we didn’t Q.
Because now I know that the little dog who will be awesome some day is still MY little Auggie. That dog is still inside of him. I just have to figure out how to unleash it and unleash it all the time.
And today I really, honestly believe it again… that one day, my little dog is going to be awesome.
Here’s the video.
September 19th & 20th Trial
Somebody needs to tell Auggie he’s doing it wrong.
This past weekend, I was glad to be back at our local club for the trial. It’s a site we’ve been to many many times, a place I’m comfortable at, and a place I feel like Auggie is comfortable at. I was hoping he would be more relaxed as far as some of his recent issues with the a-frame were concerned, hoping he would have fun, and hoping we might go home with a couple ribbons.
Saturday was a bit of a hairy mess. We didn’t even get started running Novice until after 4PM in the afternoon… and Auggie and I had rolled in around 10AM to set up and hang out with everybody. It was also a sunny day and a bit warm due to the sun; more than once I found Auggie huddled up in the back of his crate trying to catch air from his crate fan.
So when we got out there for our JWW run, he wasn’t totally feeling it. He slowed to a walk through the tunnel about halfway through, and as we entered the weave poles, he stopped entirely and stuck his nose to the ground. Augh! Something smelled quite good and he was no longer interested in me. Attention Auggie: this is not earthdog. This is agility. After several attempts and trying to get his attention back, I waved at the judge and carried my bad little puppy off the course. Snotbucket!
I sat outside the ring and mulled things over in my head. He was still so pokey. What’s his deal? His breeder offered that his confidence might still be shaken from everything he’s had to deal with as far as his jump height going up and down all over the place. Would I ever be able to restore his confidence? I wasn’t sure. And if I can’t restore that confidence, I might just resign to playing with Auggie in the backyard instead of competing.
And then we had to run Standard.
The course was set up in a pretty straight line. Jump, jump, a-frame, jump, tunnel.
Auggie would see that a-frame, and, God willing, that would be the end of the story. If I could just get him to run straight up the a-frame, everything else after that was secondary.
I decided not to even bother putting him in a sit. I was just going to drop him and take off running. I’ve seen people do that before, so why not? Maybe having him in a sit was screwing with his momentum.
So I put him down. And I took off and he came with me. And I yelled and screamed and drove that dog like crazy.
And he went up the a-frame.
I was roaring and screaming and yelling the whole time. Angels sang a chorus of Hallelujah.
And then I pushed him off the entrance to the tunnel.
Hahahahaha! Oh well. Other than that, he ran great, even did his weaves flawlessly (presumably to make up for his total disaster over on JWW.) Even with the one refusal, we got a Q! Awesome!
Sunday was not a very good day as far as the weather went. I decided I would go out early on and watch the excellent runs, and then leave during Open, pick up Auggie, and bring him back with me so he wouldn’t be out there for so long during the day. Shortly after I arrived, we got caught in a good downpour of rain. Lovely. The ground got nice and wet, then the sun came out and looked like it might at least dry up the obstacles.
Then I left to get Auggie and it rained some more. And then I sat there and it rained and rained and rained. Eventually, the rain was just there to stay. I was glad that I invested in my ASICS for the sole purpose (haha, get it?) of running in wet, muddy conditions. Auggie, however, does not have shoes that are specially made for running in wet, muddy conditions. He just has little feetsies that sometimes slip.
Oh well. If he knocked bars or anything, I wouldn’t blame him. I figured we would just go out and see what happened, and if it looked bad, I would pull him.
Well, he didn’t slip and he didn’t knock any bars, but he off-coursed twice. Once was my fault, the second time, he was too busy going “LALALALA THIS IS THE BEST GAME EVER LALALALALA!” At least I can’t say he wasn’t enjoying the game anymore at that point, because the look of joy had obviously returned to his face, and surprisingly, despite the weather, his speed was back as well.
So on we went to standard. He went straight up the a-frame again – bliss! He came out of the tunnel and I pushed him off the broad jump… then oops, I let him back jump it, getting us a wrong course as well as a refusal. Then we came to the weave poles and… Auggie disappeared on me at pole four. Doot doot de doo, he went to go check out the sandbags they had holding the dog walk down. I stood there calling him back… he started to come back, and then went “Oh hey, a-frame!” I distinctly remember going “AUGGIE DON’T YOU DARE.” LOL. He came back to me again.
I was THIS CLOSE to blowing off the run. I thought we’d had too many refusals, wrong courses, and now we were way over time. There was no way it would be a Q.
But in my head I heard his breeder’s voice, and what she always tells me. “Fix it. Whatever happens, just fix it.”
So I fixed it. It took me a while because I had to back him up a few times to help him get the entry correct, but we fixed it. And then on we went, up the teeter, through the tunnel, over the dog walk (where I practically had a heart attack because he looked for a moment like he was going to slip off it), and then through the last tire jump.
“That should be a Q,” his breeder told me after the run.
“Oh, there’s no way. That took forever. We had to be way over time.”
“No,” she says, “I think that’s a Q.”
So I packed up the car, then waited around some more… and what do you know.
That was a Q.
In fact, we were really good as far as time went. We would have Q’d even if we were playing regular agility!
And that means that in four days of trialing Auggie got his NAP.
The same dog that took me TEN TRIES to get a single Q towards his NA.
You have to be kidding me.
So there you have it. We’ve gotten a jumpers title now, and a standard title. Just, sadly, not all at the same time, LOL. We’re still in Novice Jumpers until we get those 2 more Qs towards his NJP. I have to decide if I want to move him up into Open Standard or not.
Auggie’s Return to Agility
I make it sound so overly dramatic… we really only took about a month and a half off, LOL.
First, I packed up my bag and an overnight bag for Auggie…
…and off we went. A little late, actually, which resulted in a frantic call from his breeder going “hey are you here because… you need to be here!!” I pulled in, loaded out Auggie’s crate, ran off to walk the course and listen to the briefing, ran off again to get my armband, ran Auggie to the warm-up jump and got him limbered up, then in to run JWW.
I was panicking. I felt awful. I had it in my head that we would get out there and he would go “Mmmmmeh… I don’t really want to do this.” I was all prepared to burst into tears on the course that my dog didn’t want to do agility anymore and I had to retire him and and and
I honestly thought I might pass out. I was trying to do some deep breathing to relax (and to stop the OH GOD GONNA PASS OUT feeling) but nothing was helping.
I put Auggie at the start line and decided against a lead out – while thinking I would black out at any moment and konk my head on the standard and I would get a concussion and it would be horrible – so I just ran with him. He came with me and sailed over the first jump.
Whew. Suddenly I can breathe again.
Then the next jump, and then the next. Another jump and another and another – front cross, jump jump jump… into the tunnel, over some jumps, and smoothly into the weaves, smoothly THROUGH the weaves, jump, jump, jump… oh my God, it’s honestly been so long since we’ve had a clean run.
We had a clean run. And… oh my God. We just Q’d. Oh my God.
There was a pretty long gap between our JWW and standard run so we just hung out and relaxed for a while. Standard has been our enemy from the first time we started trialing. If it’s not one thing, it’s another. Resolve the issue of missing contacts, then it’s the fact that he doesn’t want to hit the brakes to get up on the table WITHOUT flying off, THEN try to resolve the off-coursing to a contact (*headdesk repeatedly*)
Now the issue is that he has developed a judge issue with the a-frame. And the name of the judge who caused this issue is a name firmly on my List (and the List of several other competitors from this and the other trial, might I add, but I digress.) So he gave me a refusal there. But PRAISE GOD, I backed him up and he took it the second time. Hurray!! So that’s an improvement.
Some darn weave buggies that are largely my fault (the weaves were after a jump, but on either side before the weave entry was a tunnel off-course and the a-frame, Auggie’s favourite off-course, and even though he refused it before it would be just my luck that he’d off-course onto it. =P so I was SO GLAD he got past the off-courses I don’t think I was handling him right through the weaves, LOL. I’m a dork.)
The hilarity of the day: Auggie came over the double jump and went wide. Very wide. So wide he decided to slid under the folding chair that the bar setter was seated in. Then he came scooting back to me and jumped over the last jump. Everybody outside the ring was dying with laughter, going “He wanted extra points! Extra points for the chair obstacle!” He just saw that chair there and thought it was part of the course I guess, LOL. No real “visiting” because he didn’t actually care about the spotter. I have no idea. My dog is hilarious.
I had no idea what our time was. Did we make it? I just didn’t know. I kept telling everybody, “I don’t know if we Q’d. I have no idea. The time might have been too much.” The full-stop before the a-frame and all the time I wasted fixing the weaves might have put us too far over.
The placements/ribbons weren’t out yet but this club was giving people a copy of their scribe sheet, so I went to go peek at the scribe sheet. And then I walked back to our little tent and acted all casual about it.
“Well?? Well??”
“Ask Auggie what a Double Q feels like,” I said.
High fives all around, lots of celebrating, and Auggie got some more cookies for no good reason, LOL. This is our first ever Double Q, and even though it counts for absolutely nothing, it’s a big deal for me. Way to make your return to agility, Auggie.
Off we went to the hotel after that where we ordered some Chinese and crashed out on the bed and just hung out all night.
Couldn’t figure out for sure where to put his crate. I settled on the little corner AWAY from the door, but not totally crammed into the corner under the sink. This is before I brought in his pillow from the car (I had to make a few trips.)
Auggie in his crate.
Snuffling and pouting in his crate. It stormed so I put him in the crate to mellow out while it thundered. He was Not Happy.
Snoozing out on the floor later; after it quit storming I let him back out.
And hanging out on the bed with me. Yes, he did use that pillow. This is why you should always bring your own pillowcases to hotels, people… LOL.
Later, he thought that the spot underneath the bedside table would make an awesome place to crash.
He was unhappy when I told him he couldn’t sleep there all night. Sniffle sniffle.
On the second day, I blew our JWW run with us. He hadn’t even taken off for the triple jump yet, but I already knew he wasn’t going to make it. He’ll try to beat me over jumps and 99% of the time, that means he isn’t going to clear the bar. Well, I pushed it and he tried to beat me over the jump, so he crashed the last bar. The crowd all went “OHHH” because, well, of course they didn’t have my foresight so they hadn’t known before he even took off that he wasn’t going to clear the jump. =P I walked out of the ring and somebody said to me, “He still ran beautifully, though!” and I was like “Yeah, that was ALLLL my fault!” Bad mommy. Bad handler. Bad.
Standard we encountered the a-frame issue again, but this time when I backed him up he really TORE over the a-frame like he was back in his element, loving his favourite obstacle again. I screwed up again and he didn’t clear the broad jump, so when we had issues at the weave poles (which I anticipated in my walkthrough and figured I’d just have to try our best to make it through), I tried to fix it a few times and then decided, eh, who cares, we already NQd. Forget it, just let him sail over the last jump and end it on a good note.
So no Qs on Monday, but overall, an awesome weekend.
My job always seems so very mundane after a weekend at an agility trial.
I wanted to take some pics of Auggie with his ribbons and decided I was for sure taking them by…
Giant Lincoln. Anybody who’s ever been to the Illinois State Fairgrounds has probably seen this in person and they know I’m not kidding when I say it’s a GIANT Lincoln.
SERIOUSLY giant. LOL teeny tiny Auggie.
I wanted to get Auggie in the foreground, then tilt the camera and get Giant Lincoln in the background… I couldn’t get the shot. Giant Lincoln was too darn giant.
My pretty boy. =>
And yes, the ribbons are red, that means they are 2nd place ribbon. Wanna know who took first?
As expected, MACH4 Granny smoked us. ;> REALLY smoked us. She doesn’t want to slow down, apparently, LOL. It’s all a-okay though, red is Auggie’s colour so I’m fine with that! Looks like we’re both gonna be chasing the PAX together. I’m looking forward to it.
So there you have it. On the 19th & 20th we’re back at it in our local club, which I think will be a really good weekend… but we’ll see. The moral of this story is that Auggie kicked butt and he CLEARLY is digging agility again, even in a trial environment. And that he’s a big rock star. That is all.
Oh, I forgot to mention: This was the first time that we have ever been at a trial where they had two rings going at the same time. Auggie really doesn’t give a crap about what’s going on outside the ring, but he’s never competed in a place where there are people issuing commands in the other ring. It didn’t throw him off at all, though. Good boy Auggie!
Agility Trial Packing List
I know you can find a BUNCH of these online, but I thought this might be fun. In anticipation of our agility trial this weekend – one where I will actually be staying overnight in a hotel with Auggie, for the first time EVER (so excited!!) – I have been thinking a lot about what I need to remember. Local trials are no big deal, because a) nothing I have forgotten could be that big of a deal Or b) I live about ten minutes from the trial site so I could just run home to grab something. But when I’m driving an hour or more away, it feels a little more tense and I have to try and remember everything.
First, we’ll start with the goodies that are always in my car! I have an organizer in my trunk that holds:
– two beach towels
– a small container of clamp-style clothespins to pin the towels to the crate in case of a windy day
– a spill-proof water dish… this dish actually foiled my mom once, who couldn’t figure out how to take the lid off and so was going “HOW DO YOU DUMP THE WATER OUT OF THIS THING???” It really is pretty darn spill-proof.
– a crate fan
– two collapsible beach chairs
– soft-sided travel crate; Auggie rides in this whenever I drive around
– my extra PetEdge brush
– a ropey-bone and a tennis ball
– a stadium blanket
Easy enough. I always have to double-check to make sure the water dish and towels are in the car before I go, because on occasion I pull them out to wash, but they are generally already packed into the car.
Then, the far longer list of Dog Things I have to load into the car:
– wire crate
– crate pillow
– cookie treats
– First Aid kit; has in it Benadryl (already cut into halves, per the dosage Auggie would need to take), Traumeel (anti-inflammatory), styptic pads, a thermometer, petroleum jelly, and gauze wrap
– poop bags
– my Clean Run Humane Slip Lead – this is the only thing I use at trials now since the recent AKC rule that a dog must be on lead when they come into the ring and on lead before you leave the ring. I take Auggie’s collar (which has his tags attached) off when we get to the trial now and just use the slip lead at the trial. (Yes, this means my dog runs naked.)
– a bottle of water
For this trial I will also be bringing along some collapsible bowls and dog food, since we’ll be overnighting… as well as a cuddly or two to put in his crate in the hotel.
For humans, I bring:
– cooler with drinks… I typically drink soda but I always make sure to bring plenty of water for myself as well as Auggie, because if you need to rehydrate quickly, water will do it whereas soda won’t. But I also like my Mt. Dew and cannot beat my caffeine addiction, so, there you go.
– snacks
– my own first aid kid. For me this includes a contact lense case with solution already in it, a pill case packed with Aleve, Ibuprofen, and Immodium, a couple of my prescription migraine meds, foot cramp meds, some bandaids, and sunscreen
– a change of clothes should weather turn on you… for me this usually means I dress in layers AND bring along a coat, jacket, sweatshirt, whatever
– camera if you like to videotape your runs… MAKE SURE YOUR MEMORY STICK IS IN IT and has room to capture your runs.
– extra batteries for the camera, just in case
There you go… that’s what I lug with me. I usually throw a lot of things into a tote bag or two, so it takes two trips to get everything to my trial spot. Crate and the dog comes first, then I go back to the car and snag everything else!
The Aug
This weekend was not a very good agility weekend. I am concerned at this point that Auggie is no longer having fun at trials. He was incredibly slow on Saturday, and Sunday he tried to leave the ring during standard. He has never left the ring on me – I think he just wanted to let me know that he was done.
The 16 inch jump heights are too much for him. This trial was also indoor and the unusual mats were giving a lot of dogs problems – I think the combined effect was just too much for Auggie.
We have decided to give him a break. Our agility practices will stop; instead I will start playing around with herding, something I’ve wanted to do anyway. When we go back to agility, we will start running in preferred. The jump heights will go back down to 12 inches at that point. It does mean that I am basically giving up my single NA and single OAJ leg in order to pursue an NJP and NAP. We will still HAVE our NAJ but we need to start over with preferred agility rather than having that grandfather us into Open Preferred.
But it also means that this may bring the joy back to the game for Auggie, which is what is really important.
The good thing about preferred is that you can switch back and forth between preferred and regular agility. If we are ever able to challenge his measurement and get a new height card that puts him at the correct height, we would be able to switch back to regular agility.
So, well… there you have it.
I hopefully will soon post with some herding photos/videos.
MANY UPDATES
When did I last update this thing? I have no idea.
What has happened in the meantime:
Next to nothing. We had another agility trial hosted by the same club as the one I previously posted about, and it only solidified my decision to never, ever, ever go to a trial hosted by this club again. It was terrible. I saw things on the Novice Jumpers course that no judge in their right mind should have had in a novice course. It was just terrible. If that were my first trial I would have thought “This s**t is too hard” and quit agility forever. Really. Some challenges are necessary, I agree, but when there are things that make a course flat out DANGEROUS – no matter if it’s Novice, Open, or Excellent – there’s a real problem.
We have received our official jump height card and I am not happy with the measurement. I have heard rumors that you can no longer challenge, but don’t know if this is true. If it’s not true and you can still challenge, you better believe I’m challenging.
Regardless, we have been practicing with jump heights at 16 in the meantime, and we’re doing pretty good. I’m very happy with the clearance Auggie’s been giving me.
I have not been doing a lot more work in the jumping program, because the weather has been disgusting – rain 5-6 days a week, and one sunny day that is usually insufferably hot; that one sunny day we have been taking advantage of to scoot off to Auggie’s breeder’s house for agility practice, so the jumping chute on the same day would be too much for him, IMHO. I am hoping the weather improves, and I think I may actually start the program completely over again using 16 inch jump heights.
Meanwhile, the agility trial I went to also offered rally, so I went ahead and entered rally both days. We didn’t place the first day, and got second the second day (some other guy beat our time by a second or two, and also Auggie kept trying to high-five me instead of down, so I’m pretty sure that is what happened with our score, LOL.)
Regardless of placing, we did Q both days – so Auggie now has his RN. Hurray Auggie!
This coming weekend we are doing a little indoor trial. We are two legs away from our NA and two away from our OAJ, so if he has a stellar weekend… well, I will just pee my pants with joy. I’m hoping to at least come away with one Q each after the weekend is over and done with.
I haven’t been doing our Natural Jumping program. I got thrown off with bad weather, an intense summer course, and a vacation. I’m unsure now if I want to actually start back over at week 1 at 16 inch jump heights and let him work through it, or what I want to do. Being unsure of where to start again is holding us back for sure. I think I will see how this weekend goes, and then maybe get started again next week.
Auggie has started DOGGIE DAYCARE as of last Wednesday. He’s doing really well. Hopefully I will be able to get some pics in the coming weeks and post some cute Auggie-playing-with-other-dogs photos. =>
Uhhhh I think that’s it. I’ll try to remember to update this thing more often.
Finally… finally!
I am very happy to say that, as of yesterday, I was finally able to change the sidebar to read that we only need TWO legs towards our NA title…
Yes, finally, finally, after ten tries, Auggie qualified in Novice Standard. SCT was 74 and Auggie’s time was 74.42; he ran up to the table and then stopped to just stare at it so got a refusal, so our score was 95.
I am SO PROUD of my little guy. Saturday we had a pretty rough day at the trial… the surface was TERRIBLY muddy, full of potholes, and the grass was that nasty, stiff stuff that you sit down on and it feels like you might as well be sitting on nails. Not to mention we got measured into 16 again because he stood on the measuring table so terrified he was trembling. Sigh.
But he made up for it on Sunday with a really great performance in JWW (NQ) and his fabulous qualifying run in Standard, proving once again that he can take just about everything in stride and bust it out, to boot.
We drove home blasting “Bad to the Bone.” I also was singing “baaad to the bone… baaad to the bone… b-b-b-b-bad… b-b-b-b-bad…” to him while holding him at the start line for standard while the bar setters were finishing raising the height on the table. I’m pretty sure the volunteer sitting near the start line could hear me and she must have thought I was nuts, but hey… it seems to have worked!
And would you believe it – I completely forgot to put his target out and practice with it before we went in the ring, but he STILL performed every one of those contacts excellently.
April 25th & 26th Trial
I have jumping videos still to edit and post, but this weekend we had our first agility trial of the season, so I thought I’d go ahead and update what happened.
First, I will say that I was excited to see the weather was going to be WARM this weekend. Last April, we were huddled up under blankets and still freezing, so this was going to be a nice change. Unfortunately, this spring has been VERY windy, and this weekend was no different, with winds 25-35 MPH both days.
On Saturday, we got our first leg in Open Jumpers! We had a hiccup at the weave poles which cost me a refusal and some time, so I got a score of 93 and second place. I don’t own my own set of 12 weave poles, so the only change Auggie has had to practice them is out at J’s house, and thus he wasn’t exactly used to powering through 12. He popped out at pole 10, and I had to put him back through the last two (I chose NOT to go back to the beginning because that would cost us even MORE time – right decision, as I was only two seconds over this way.) So it’s not really his fault. Plus FIRST LEG IN OPEN JUMPERS!!
Still no legs in standard and it’s almost entirely my fault. There were three jumps, then a tempting off-course dog walk… but the correct obstacle in the sequence was the a-frame. I SAW that dog walk and thought “golly, Auggie may want to take that.” I SHOULD have front-crossed after the third jump and put him up the a-frame.
But I ignored the little voice in my head. I thought “But he LOVES the a-frame!!”
Sure enough, Auggie went up that dog walk. I ran to the end and tried to pull him forward enough that he wouldn’t get stuck in his endless loop of dog walk THIS way, dog walk THAT way (SO FUN FOR AUGGIE… not fun for me) and failed. He turned around and took the dog walk back, and about halfway across the plank… the wind gusted up and my little dog got blown off the dog walk.
I grabbed him and waved at the judge, who told me I should put him through the tunnel at least to make it a good experience for him, so I put him through the tunnel and then celebrated like we just had the best run ever, and got the heck off that course.
So it was my fault he off-coursed onto the dog walk. But I can’t do a damn thing about those 35 MPH winds. Auggie was not the only dog blown off the dog walk, and for all we know he might have been blown off when he was SUPPOSED to be on the dog walk anyway.
He is okay; running, playing, jumping around as usual that night, but sure scared the crap out of me. We’re going to see a canine chiropractor hopefully sometime this week to have him checked out to make sure he didn’t twist anything, but he’s acting fine.
On Sunday, we actually got to run the full standard course – and Auggie only took the dog walk once (!!!) Also major breakthrough in that he did EVERY. SINGLE. ONE. of his contacts with no problems. No off-courses, but a run out on Jump 2 (my fault) and a refusal on the tire – he was sniffing something interesting on the ground – and a refusal on the table, because I don’t tihnk he’s had to actually jump UP onto a table since… well, last trial in September, I guess? I really need to get my table built.
Anyway, the faults plus the time faults screwing around try to get him moving again/get him on the table put us waaay over. So here we are… four trials, eight runs in, and not a single Q in standard. There’s nothing else to do but laugh about it. I think I’ll fall to the ground sobbing with joy when we finally get a standard Q!
Open Jumpers Sunday was pretty good. I had a refusal on his weave entry – not totally sure what happened there, I’ll have to watch the video and see if it was my fault – and he popped out of the weaves again (adding “set of 12 weaves” to my list of stuff to build and work with.) I didn’t succeed in calling him off an off-course jump. I’m going to blame that on the again 25-35 MPH gusting winds and that he couldn’t hear me, because I THINK he heard me… but it was too late; I think he turned an eye over to me RIGHT before he was about to take the jump – like as he was already in motion to jump, he suddenly heard me and realized I wasn’t right beside him. Ah well. So again, faults plus some time fiddling around getting him through those weaves put us too far over to Q. We would have been SO GOLDEN except for those darn weaves! My fault entirely.
Strangely enough, this is the first time I haven’t had major ring nerves before we go out and run, and the first time I’ve really left the ring honestly feeling like “Meh! So we didn’t Q!” I’m not sure why. I kinda like this, though.
Our major goal, besides Auggie’s successful contacts when we actually got into standard (oh wind!), is that Auggie has apparently returned to my awesome little man, not dropping a single bar. That’s my guy. Aw yeah.
I jokingly asked Auggie why I was picturing us in Excellent Jumpers and still in Novice Standard.
Okay, maybe I’m not totally joking.
Rally-O/Auggie’s Birthday Part 1
This is me at Rally-O:
“A DOWN?? Nobody told me he had to do a DOWN!!”
I don’t know WHY it never occured to me he would have to do a down. We hadn’t been working on that, and certainly not working on it with him at my side (usually he does his sits and downs in front of me, not next to me in heel.)
Oops!!!
Our score was 90, time was 2:16 because we spent probably 20 seconds trying to go from a sit to a down – hahahahahaha! Oh God it was hilarious. And also, there were times when Auggie barked in my face. Rally-O was a LOT different to him than agility. He got out there and thought it was time to go… and then it wasn’t. I think he was kind of confused. “Hey Mom… aren’t I supposed to, like, go over some jumps and run through a tunnel or something?”
But when we crossed the finish line you’d have thought we just won the Olympics or something. I made a HUGE deal out of it and Auggie got super excited. That was the whole point, really: go out there and have some fun, work together, no pressure, and act like he’d just done the best thing ever.
We went out afterwards for the qualifying ribbon presentation, and I thought we’d be getting a Q ribbon – and suddenly he was calling my number for fourth place. “Wait… what? OH!! That’s US!” I told Auggie. The judge was really nice, shook my hand, and then we got our ribbons, a rope bone, and a cookie treat. Auggie tried to eat the ribbons out of my hand, haha. He then got a HUGE chomp off his cookie treat, we packed up, and took off. Crate space was very limited so I thought we’d go home and give some other people some room.
Not bad for a bratty little birthday puppy.
Trial #3, Day 2
Early success can be kind of a bad thing.
You sort of start to expect the good luck to continue.
When it doesn’t, you’re not sure what to make of it.
Today’s JWW course was a LOT better for my lame brain than yesterday. A tunnel separated the first third of jumps from the second third; weave poles separated the second third from the final third of jumps.
However, Mister Auggie HIT THE BRAKES on the weaves after doing 10 of them. Hit the brakes! I was prepared for him to pop out of the last jump – he has been doing that lately – but not a complete stop! It might have been faster to pull him all the way back to the beginning and have him start over, but I decided to simply direct him through the last two jumps. However, this took time – time that put us too far over to qualify.
Still a very good run. Auggie is not the fastest dog in the world, and I am really more concerned with accuracy before speed… but there are times that he forces me to change my plan. I walked the course with a front cross after jump – oh, I dunno, 10 or so – and he was WAY ahead of me as he soared over that jump. There was no hustling to get in front of him. The front cross was because an off-course jump was set directly in front and I was hoping to cross and block him off from that jump. Because I did not make my cross, I instead had to CALL CALL CALL and stop him from off-coursing.
And he responded to my call off, which makes me very proud… but not as proud as what happened next, because (and I don’t even remember doing this, but I have seen the video so I know it happened!) I still wanted to be on the inside of the jumps and curl him around into the weaves. So my body decided to do a rear cross over a jump… and rear cross we did. He was fantastic, especially for a dog that really hates to lose sight of me and dislikes rear crosses.
Standard, on the other hand.
He was distracted. He was tired. Two days may just be too much for my little guy right now. Until he matures some, we may not be doing two days anymore.
First disaster: I had two choices – try and do a front cross in an area I didn’t think I had room to cross, or try and rear cross him into a tunnel. As I said, this dog hates rear crosses, especially into a tunnel. I made the wrong choice… I should have tried the front cross. He wouldn’t go into the tunnel. He almost decided to go into the WRONG side of the tunnel. He stopped in the middle of the tunnel bend to take a sniffy-sniffy at the sand bags holding the tunnel. He FINALLY got into the tunnel.
Second disaster: He came out of the tunnel and was supposed to go over a triple jump. He CRASHED into the jump. I do not mean he knocked a bar, I mean he crashed into it. It was actually hard to see if he even really attempted to jump the bars as opposed to just charging right through them.
Third disaster: He skipped the tire jump. Who cares. He already knocked a bar so that’s a NQ. I’m not wasting time when he’s obviously already stressed and tired by trying to get him back around and through the tire jump.
Fourth disaster: He came off the a-frame and crashed into another jump. I slowed and almost stopped. I thought he was hurt. He kept going, so I had to speed up again to catch up.
Fifth disaster: He crashes into yet another jump. At this point, I seriously almost waved to the judge and said “We’re finished, thank you,” picked him up, and carried him off the course. I was VERY concerned, because he has never dropped a single bar in his agility career before, and now he crashes into three separate jumps? Jumping TWELVE instead of sixteen, too.
But he was still willing and was not limping, so I went ahead and did the final two obstacles with him – a set of weave poles and one final jump, which he cleared.
We have lots of theories about what happened, but in the end, he just checked out. He wasn’t interested in running the course. But, as J said, he was still smiling after it all (I was holding him afterwards and giving his muscles a massage to make sure he wasn’t hurt and wouldn’t be stiff the next day – no wonder he was smiling!)
It’s hard to go home with no ribbons for the weekend after so much early success. I mean, a title on my first agility dog after only two trials? And then a Q-less weekend. It’s rough.
But there were lots of positives in our Jumpers run, he did ALL of his contacts on both days…
and, as always – and most importantly – Auggie and I are learning more and more about each other.
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!
Trial #2, Day 2
Our haul from today…
Wait a second!! Are you SURE you saw that right?? Maybe you should look closer.
I am now the proud owner of Sentinel’s The Flash NAJ CGC. That’s right… we got our novice jumpers title this weekend!! And all three of his qualifying scores – we got running 16! Snazzy!
Today’s runs:
Standard run!
He got buggy on the table and that’s what screwed us, but J is almost positive he just didn’t “see” the table as a table. She thinks he saw it like a jump, since it’s so thin and the walls around it are plain white, not to mention the top is pale purple. So we got 1 table fault (two points) and a refusal for that, but it was the time more than anything else that really put us over. I then failed to pull him in enough to get him a straight shot into the tunnel, so he didn’t go into that right away – another refusal! Also, notice that he doesn’t come OUT of the tunnel. I notice he’s not coming, I can’t see the tunnel moving – where is Auggie? I lean over and look into the tunnel… and he’s standing there at the bend, nose to the ground, sniffing something interesting! He sees me, goes “Oh – HI!” and comes running out. What a goofball!
Regardless of the NQ, I watched this a billion times because of how wonderful his weaves are!
JWW – the run that got us our title!
Would have been clean, but he changed my plan on me! I was going to front cross before that blue tunnel, but when he spotted the tunnel he suddenly sped up so I couldn’t get in front. I KNEW he would hate me trying to rear cross him into the tunnel, and sure enough, when he got to the tunnel entrance and I started to try and cross, he suddenly hit the brakes. Refusal! The time it took for me to back him up and put him into the tunnel put us over time. You can’t see them as well here, but he did flawless weaves again here… so beautiful.
Anyway, I came around that last jump and everybody was clapping and going “THAT WAS GREAT!” and the VMO says to me “That was a Q!!” and my mom goes “YOU DID IT” and J goes “YOU DID IT!”
And I say, because I saw the time on the clock as I picked Auggie up at the exit, “But we went over time.”
“It’s okay,” J says. “You’re allowed time faults in Novice.”
I stare at her.
“You get a point off for every second over time, but you weren’t over by that much, even with the refusal. You did it.”
I stare.
“YOU DID IT.”
“Wh…??”
Seriously… it didn’t sink in. It didn’t sink in until I looked at the scores posted and saw, yes, he really did Q. And then I stammered out to the trial secretary that we get a new title ribbon. And even now…
we’re in Open. My dog can run in Open.
I’m in shock. Seriously.
