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.