April Fun

April rocks - everyone is doing so well! Trixie finished her OA and OAJ (back to excellent thank God, not being there was killing me haha) and Scooter got not one but two AXJ legs! and even an AX leg :D This past weekend at our club's trial she had one really awesome run where she was 8 full seconds UNDER time!!! These runs give me hope that a MACh is possible for her! But I'm still just going to take 1 Q at a time, ... even so I can't keep myself from thinking that she 1 Q away from working on her MACh!!! and Trixie is just awesome, she had a REALLY nice JWW run too - 4.8YPS though...why can we not break 5?! Well I guess you have to have something to work on though, right? I do think my handling has gotten A LOT better, I'm not incredibly late with my front crosses anymore! Someone who I didn't even know and the show even told me how good my crosses were :) And while we're talking about break throughs Trixie GROWLED in the weaves!!! This has never happened at a trial before and I really hoping this is only the beginning. We have 2 more weeks until our next trial and I can't wait. God, I love agility so much


Here are our runs from the Krusin' K9 Trial (Burlington's video's have wayyyyy too much light in them...):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlXqsfs5NqY

Weekend CPE Trial

There weren't any rally/obedience/ USDAA or AKC agility trials so we went out and did CPE! (wow I'm a trial junkie ;) ) Usually I come home from CPE trials obsessed with the venue and plan to do like 12 more CPE trials, but not this time. Sure the dogs did well, as always (Trix 4/5 and Scoot 3/5) but the trial didn't seem AS fun. Maybe I'm just used to knowing a lot of people there like at AKC shows. It also probably had something to do with the surface... I usually really don't think about the surface unless there's something obviously wrong with it - at this trial is was like trying to run in quicksand! I had trouble WALKING the course without sliding about and, to make matters worse, there was dust/dirt EVERYWHERE - i.e. eyes, shoes, socks, BENETH socks, dog's fur (eyes too I'm sure),  and feet. I'm definitely not planning on going back (unless it's resurfaced) because it was so bad; which is a shame because I LOVED everything else, the location, the exercise area, the crating space, the food (OMG it was good), plus it's the closest CPE trial around (1 hour). The judge was a really nice guy, at least I thought so until I saw his courses! Level 4/5/C's jackpot was just ridiculous, only ONE dog out of like 50 got it, Trixie was close but she decided to bounce off the teeter... hmmm I wonder what we'll be training next?? Except for colors all of the courses were really demotivating for slow dogs, plus the surface didn't help (poor Scooter knocked a bar, I blame it on the surface because...I CAN! ha just kidding but really I think I saw her slip, and I noticed both dogs having trouble with take offs/landings. Wildcard was the worst I think - SUPER tight, like USDAA Masters tight, only tighter... I did like his colors course though, very true to CPE! :D

On quite another note I've been thinking about taking a break from agility, no don't panic just agility trialing. After CPE nationals I have like 4 agility trials planned for the summer, instead I think we'll be doing more APDT/AKC rally, obedience and maybe even trying CDSP. Who knows? CDSP (Companion Dog Sports Program) is like a happy, carefree version of AKC obedience, I think it'd be a good starting point for Trixie and some fun for Scooter too. I also think after Scooter and Trixie get their C-ATCHs and Trixie gets her PDCh in USDAA I'll just stick to AKC agility with the occasional USDAA tournament trial to Q for nationals and I'll do regionals too because why not :) And of course I'll still do APDT rally, great ribbons and nice start times with down time to do homework in between. I do think I'll take Trixie as far as she wants to go in rally, past the ARChX like I'd originally planned and take Scooter past just 1 ARChMX, I know it'll be expensive but if it means trialing less and having more fun when we do then that's what we'll do

Back to Awesome-ness

Trixie and I had some fun at class tonight. We ran 1 of the Small dog WTT courses, round 3?? (http://www.akc.org/pdfs/events/agility/world_team/2011/Course4_Small.pdf) Trixie totally nailed it, twice!! I totally sucked at handling the pull through and 4 to 5. I initially tried it the tightest way and she was okay but the thirdish time a ran it she wasn't too happy about having to run it. I'd like'd to have tried an olga between 4/5 but her brain had died so I just went through, skipped 4, and finished a nice run. I didn't want to practice the pull through too much - she's just starting to assume she has to stay on the far side, why ruin that?I was SO happy with 13-20, she had a great push to 16 something I had been struggling with before but now I think we have it under control. Scooter was also looking good at class, even her sends are coming along - almost NADAC worthy! - Not that I'm going to NADAC land, I still think the hoops are stupid, and the courses aren't interesting enough, CPE's my fun break - no need for 2 easy/fun venues! plus Scooter wouldn't make time

Keep Marchin' On

Long story short this past weekend's AKC trial was a mess - 0/4 Q's all of which SHOULD have been Q's, except for maybe Jumpers. Trixie's 3 weeks into her Lyme treatment and has seemed totally fine outside of agility, maybe no training this week had something to do with it? In any event she was MUCH better at class, hopefully she'll make it through this CPE trial weekend well and with some level 3/4 Q's - she's going for her CL3 so I hope she does well , Scooter's running too! here's what's going down...


Trixie:

Level 3 Standard - Last Q for her CL3-R
Level 3 Colors/Wildcard - 1 Q of each for her CL3-H/CL3
Level 4 Jackpot - 1st Q (haha )
Level 4 Jumpers - 2n Q hopefully

Scoot

Level 3 Standard - 1st Q!
Level 3 Colors/Wildcard - 1 of each for CL3-H
Level 3 Jackpot - 1st Q
Level 4 Jumpers - 2nd Q, hopefully we'll make time ;)

Can't wait for all 10 runs, I love CPE <3

Various Fun Things :)

Several awesome things have happened but I didn't had any time to write about them so better late than never I guess :) Last Saturday Scooter and I went to an APDT rally O trial in Andover and came home with 4/4 q's for our 8th & 9th ARChEX, RL2X2, and RL3X legs - I can't wait for the next trial when we actually get all of these titles! - we got 1 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th (the full set!) with scores of 210, 210, 209, and 207 (I failed to remember the station and when I moved to read the sign Scooter moved with me, a little too responsive ? haha) I want to try and finish up Scooter's ARChEX and ARChMX this year so I can start to focus more on agility and actually doing obedience with Trixie - she has 1 BN leg (which she got with a 193 despite a 3 point handler error) I'm thinking that obedience training will be a focus while I'm in college but who knows, so much is still up in the air.

Back to other fun things! Scooter got re-certified as a therapy dog! We didn't pass the 1st recertification test because I forgot to tell her to stay...what's wrong with me? ... and Scooter had some definite stress issues on the second one - but we passed! I'm excited to start doing volunteer work with her at a local hospital, who knows maybe we'll even go for our AKC Therapy Dog (ThD) title - if we do we may have to earn it over 2 summers because it requires 50 visits, something that would be hard to do in 10-12 weeks of summer ( although there's a minimum 75 hour requirement so who knows?)

Unfortunately I missed BOTH of our agility classes this week so the trial should be interesting this week! As long as we finish our NF and Q in Open Standard and JWW (for our 2nd legs) I'll be happy, Time 2 Beat will just be a fun bonus :) Watching all of the runs at AKC nationals has made me even more excited to go to Tulsa that I already am! (I didn't think it was possible!) Given our consistency we'll hopefully have gotten all of our QQ's and points by the end of the summer, but lets not get ahead of ourselves - one trial at a time...