A Spot of Geraldton

Raven, Cypher and I did a spot of Geraldton on the weekend, popped up there for an agility and jumping trial. It is a fairly long 5 hour drive but it was worthwhile in the end. Cypher is one card closer to his ADM title now and Raven is one card closer to her Agility Champion title, the fur kids did good. Cypher did really well with his only two faults being completely and utterly handler error. This is becoming disturbingly common and whilst I know one is not supposed to beat oneself up about these things it is becoming more and more annoying and frustrating. Anyway I was really impressed with his first run of the night in Open Agility, he was flying and actually felt really fast. It was all good till I had brain blank on the course and left him wondering what the hell he was supposed to be doing. He didn’t think anything of it though by the time we ran out and had a great game of tug. Raven was next up and was caught out by the heavier seesaw and then dropped a bar so we withdrew. Masters Agility up next, determined not to confuse the boy again I ran Cypher exactly according to plan, he momentarily thought he had a better plan in the middle of a three jump pinwheel but I was able to convince him it was a bad plan! He ran clear for 3rd place and his fourth leg of ADM. I helped out with stewarding for a while till Open Jumping came up. I ran Cypher again and he was great and this was despite getting really stuck and hung up in the weavers, he still gave me his best and I was so proud of him, he went clear for 3rd place out of 6 qualifiers. Raven decided that my lead out was just a bit too far and broke it which ended up with me having do a spectacular vault over the top of her which in turn led to us getting a refusal or a DQ on the distance challenge. She then also got hung up in the weavers as well (most unlike her, I think they were quite a lot less flexible than the weavers we use in Perth) which caused her to miss one. We carried on and she knocked, I think the second last bar so we withdrew. Masters Jumping up next and despite me getting my act together for Cypher for the previous two runs I managed to cause a refusal on the last run home by completing a very poor front cross on him. He didn’t notice though and we carried on and had a good game of tug at the end. I decided for Raven to keep quiet most of the time and to make a deliberate conscious effort to be extremely clear and purposeful about my commands and cues. It worked! We had a slight wobble on a 180 degree two jump sequence which cost us some time but we still ended up in 3rd place less than one second behind first place. That card got us one closer to her Agility Champion title. To be honest I don’t know if we will achieve this title but with her speed at the current time I figure there is no harm in setting such a high goal. I figure if we just aim to go clear then her speed will take care of the rest; my only issue at the moment is my lack of consistency with giving her direction fast enough. We have been competing for nearly 5 years now and she has never been as fast as she is right now, I just feel like I am so behind her on course in reacting and directing her and I am not sure how I can work on this to improve it as I never see this speed from her in training. I need one of those Matrix upload programs that I just plug in and automatically then have the ability to keep up with her speed. Any suggestions anyone???