Today was our first trial in two months, we have hardly done any agility because the last trial was when I figured out Breeze had hurt her back, so today we also saw the return of the SEPARATION ANXIETY Breeze used to suffer from. Ughghg, I so thought we were over that. Breeze chewed through her crate-she was found running through the bulding...so glad she was ok, and she was not going to be left at the start line, during JWW she was trembling, ahhhhhhhh, oooh Breeze.
AKC has the super nice novice courses, and you can get a bunch of faults and still Q in novice. LOL, of course Breeze and I SAILED through novice, and I was feeling like hot stuff. I had it figured out how many more trials it would take us to finish up our open title because of course we would sail through open like we had sailed through novice....LOL, RIGHT!!! Our first two open JWW courses were a piece of cake and then .....something happened and we stalled. I am not saying this to sound like I feel bad, or am giving up, but it SERIOUSLY feels like we will never Q again. We will be stuck in Open hell for the rest of our lives, LOL. Today I am not even disappointed or frustrated by that...IT IS WHAT IT IS.
The weaves are killing us. I keep thinking we have them licked....and they seem so good at home and we get to a trial and boom....they are not looking so good.
I thought with all the stay work and impulse control stuff our start line would be FANTASTIC---WELL WRONG! Our start line was about the worse it has ever been, I ran with Breeze in standard so we got around the start line thing, but in JWW she broke her start line, went AROUND the first jump which put her in a rotten positon to jump the second jump so she dropped that bar-the rest of the run was fantastic, but it sure did not get us our Open JWW title!
I thought we would be rusty with our handling, and that....I am VERY proud of and I feel like we did GREAT. I managed to control my arms flapping around and just ran, and we did the actual handling on the course pretty durn good.
I have not done a lot of weaves but I was practing with just entries and a lot of them at a fast speed....I THOUGHT we actually might do those this time, WELL WRONG.
I was so wrong about today, I guess I am not good predicting our performance ;-). Maybe dogs like to keep us guessing.
FIRST WAS OPEN JWW.
YIKES,..The pin wheels were FUN. It was a GREAT course, I just wish we could have made it prettier. The 13 to 14 jumps to the tunnel made the dogs really build up a lot of speed, then there was such a small area from the tunnel to the weaves, I knew that was going to be a challenge and ....what can I say we tried the weaves twice...screwed them up both times and went on. NO Q for us in Jumpers between not getting the weaves and the start line fiasco. No Open JWW title today.
OPEN STANDARD
WE WERE SOOO CLOSE, and yet....so far to that elusive Q. GREAT course, again a lot of fun. EXCEPT for the weaves the only bobble was after the dog walk Breeze is supposed to do her down and she just stopped,...stood there and looked at me like I was NUTS when I said MAT! So I repeated the MAT command and she looked like I was crazy but laid down. I was pretty happy she stopped and checked in actually because that tunnel opening was right in front of her face, she did not think about going on-so I was impressed with that. It was cool to choose our own position on the table, I had Breeze do her auto down, but it felt nice not to have to worry about it. The 12 in height on the tire (Breeze jumps 16 in AKC so the tire is now at 12 with the new changes to the AKC rules) did not phase her at all. Because it took us twice to get the weaves there was no open standard Q for us today ;-(.
4 comments:
I'm glad you are able to take this in good spirits, joke about it, and focus on the positive!
Sorry you didn't get a Q, but I think its even more impressive that Breeze did MAT right in front of a tunnel. Wow.
Don't feel bad about being stuck at a level. We've all been there (and still are......)
Sorry about the no Qs and feeling like you are stuck in Open! We were stuck in Open STD for quite awhile and now we are permanently stuck in Exc. A STD (only one Q so far in a billion tries) so we know how you feel. You have the weaves, we have the chute and time faults. But Breeze will get those weaves and I'll get that chute and speed up - and then something else will happen - LOL!
Chute as part of a serpentine at the end of your STD course - that would've been fun to try for me!
As for Breeze's separation anxiety - maybe it will take awhile for all of the foundation work to sink in and become automatic enough to override the stresses at a trial - she'll get there!
All I can say is I feel your pain. Ive been in Open standard for over a year. In Exc.JWW, 22 runs , no "Q"s. Everytime its something, wrong tunnel entrance, a drop bar ect.. All I can say is keep practicing, it will come. At least that is what I keep telling myself. LOL Diana
Glad you're not discouraged. From what I read (Katie and I have only taken a handlful of agility classes, never competed) things like this happen all the time to most of the dogs! We just never notice when it's other people's dogs! LOL
The course looked fun, how you keep track of where to go next is beyond me!
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