Bunbury Trial Sunday August 13th 2006

Last Sunday it was well worth the trip to the Bunbury trial (a 2 hour drive) as I came away with 4 qualification cards and 3 FIRST places! Cypher was a star, winning both Excellent Agility and Excellent Jumping. That puts him on 4 legs of his JDX title (1 to go) and it was his first leg of ADX. It was satisfying to note that the previous two weeks of having nothing but twelve weavers set up in my backyard (once they’re up nothing else fits LOL!) and me asking Cypher to weave everytime I went out in the backyard certainly paid off – in four runs he didn’t miss one set of weaves. It’s daunting to think though that he may be in Masters Jumping soon! His Open runs were very nice however my handling in a couple of sections meant no passes, but to see how focussed he was compared to a month ago at the ACWA trials was heartening to say the least! In Agility I simply didn’t give him a strong enough command and forgot what Stacy had told me about my overuse of his name. I am making him become less and less responsive to it if I say it too many times on a course. In Jumping I tried a handling move on him that had worked really well with Raven taking him from the weavers to the tunnel and then realised as he shot past me into the wrong end of the tunnel that it was a move that Raven was experienced in and that he was not! Valuable lesson learnt! Apart from that glitch his run was fantastic.
Raven – well I had some doubts about how day would be, first run up being Masters and she had the 2nd bar down which was only the #2 obstacle. Frustration plus – I dropped Raven and replaced the bar, agonised for a split second if we should walk and then asked the judge if I could continue. It was a really interesting course with some unique challenges and I really wanted to see how I handled the rest of it. So I continued and my handling was right on the ball as we negotiated all the tricky bits. Then 3 obstacles from the end Raven dropped another bar before the chute tunnel so I then stopped, replaced the bar and she left without finishing the course. I said nothing put her back in the car without any treats and then got Cypher out, hoping that she wasn’t going to set the tone for the rest of her runs that day. Open Agility she was brilliant, my handling fell down when I told her to turn after a tyre yelled “Walk it” for the dogwalk and then took off on her determined to get to the end of the dogwalk before she did. She completely and instantly responded to my body cues which did not even suggest the dogwalk was next. Proof once again that regardless of how clearly and firmly you yell your verbals sometimes they will always rely on your body cues first! She kept all her bars up so had a big jackpot at the end of her run. Then it was Masters Jumping. This time I kept my mouth shut apart from maybe 6 commands and we blitzed the course winning 1st place by over 4 seconds. Open Jumping her last run of the day was nearly perfect apart from a small wobble at a tyre which cost us 0.43 of a second to go clear and get 2nd place. It was a really smooth run though that felt really good. There were a number of us recalling the words of Stacy from the seminar the weekend before and the fact that 5 out of the 8 first places were taken by those who had attended the seminar certainly helped confirm the value of her instruction! Now we have another TWO whole weeks to wait till the next trial – thankfully a double one!