The Agility Marathon

Okay maybe it wasn't exactly a marathon, but we did 3 trials in the past 5 days and usually we do 1 trial day each weekend. Nevertheless everyone loved it.

On Tuesday I headed out to Lewisberry, PA (just south of Harrisburg) for the Cavalier King Charles Spaniel Club's national specialty agility trial. When I first got there I was a little disappointed because I didn't see ANY cavaliers - 'what's up with that?' I thought. Apparently I just wasn't looking closely enough. When the 12-8-4" dogs started to get ready to run in masters the cavaliers just started to come out of the woodwork, and then kept coming. Before Masters Jumpers all the Cavaliers came together to be in a picture. It was a little chaotic, but adorable - the best kind of chaos :)

Trixie got to tag along as an honorary Cavalier. Unfortunately the turf was pretty slippery and she had a lot of trouble with it. It seemed like every time she tried to open up and run she slipped :/ Of course, she was still a good girl and QQ'd with a 1st place in standard.

Scooter also had a good day and QQ'd for her 8th towards her PAX - yeah!! Her JWW run was slow - she got SCT - but her Standard run was awesome (17 points) Then the marathon continued a few days later at my club's agility trial. Usually I would only enter a show on Saturday, but Trixie loves the site, I want to support the club, it's close, I like agility,... clearly I have no problem coming up with excuses to enter agility trials :) Trixie kicked off the weekend with a really nice JWW run. She's really beginning to pick up some speed in JWW, long gone are the days when she'd jog through jumpers *knocks on wood*. She even picked up a placement (3rd) and was only off 1st place by less than 2 seconds, a huge improvement from being off 4th place by 6 seconds.

Scooter's JWW run was less than stellar and I had to run the outside of every line. After I picked up her score sheet I thought that it said she was over time by 1 second, I wasn't surprised because she basically walked. Later in the day, though, a fellow club member told me how hilarious she thought it was that Scooter got SCT EXACTLY and she clearly didn't want to do any more work than she needed to, she even got 3rd place to boot.

 Masters Standard was basically a giant loop. I didn't see any dogs take off courses or really have much trouble with anything. Any issues were on the order of being called over a bar, missing a weave entry, or taking an off course because the handler got behind. Trixie enjoyed herself and I got to go for a 39 second all out sprint - well 34 seconds minus the 5 seconds on the table :) QQ#3 for her and a 3rd place. 1st and 2nd were ahead of her by less than 0.5 seconds. Scooter randomly decided that she HAD to stop for about 8 seconds on the dogwalk AND the teeter *sigh* She still made time, got 5 PACh points and QQ#9, but didn't place. Still she *did* run when she wasn't on the contacts. I guess I'll take what she's willing to give me.

Day 2 of the weekend began at dawn. I literally was leaving the house before 6 because Scooter's JWW walkthrough began at 7. I thought about starching her from the day because she had had such slow times yesterday and thought she was probably still tired from her adventure on Tuesday. Despite my reservations I headed out before the sun was in the sky. To my surprise Scooter totally rocked. She got 15, ONE FIVE points in JWW. Of course I have no video of this amazing event, but she ran the entire course *happy dance* and got 1st place too. Trixie also had a fast run, again less than 2 seconds behind. I was happy with her placing 3rd because it was a much more open course and she tends to not be as fast on those for whatever reason.

By standard I was feeling pretty run down even though it wasn't even noon yet. I think Scooter drew on that because she walked until the end line. Luckily I was able to rally a bit for Trixie and we managed to get our third QQ of the week and get 2nd (0.22 behind 1st). I missed my walkthrough so I didn't exactly have the best plan for getting her to the table, but she got there.