Gozzy Trial March 2007

It was a good night all round for us with only one frustrating 3 seconds out of my 6 runs with my two BCs. I ran another Rhonabwy BC tonight, a boy called Dexter for his first time in Excellent Jumping and he ran beautifully for me right up until I got lost! We lost some momentum; he took a bar and came back out a chute tunnel. My fault entirely, we were going great guns up till then! Fun to run!
I ran the Sheltie Rumour in Open Jumping and she did a lovely cracker of a run for a clear round, she was light hearted and happy tonight and it was good to see.
For my two I was very pleased with how they ran and also pleased to note I was more on the ball with their handling. Raven did a blinder of a run in Masters Agility however I just about completely stuffed up a rear cross for her over a bar that was side by side with another bar. We dithered and faffed and I did copious amounts of yelling but eventually she figured out what I wanted (likely no thanks whatsoever to me!) and we carried on to finish strongly. She ended up with a 3rd place which was good as it's another leg towards that seemingly far away AgCh Title. Cypher’s run was before hers and this was the one with the frustrating 3 seconds in it, put it this way I yelled ‘Come’ and he went :P and sucked into a tunnel, his only saving grace was that I didn’t quite give him enough view of the jump before he tunnel sucked and the bar came down. Other than this hiccup it was a very nice run. My aim for training with him this week is to stop repeating myself when I say come on course (and keep having tug toy on me to reward him with a game) and say it once. Huge party if he responds immediately, turn my back on him and walk away if he doesn’t, show him the toy that he missed out on. Can’t hurt to try. Next up was Open Agility and he flew around this course quite tidily. I had told myself to work his contacts (ie insist on the lie down) as I had seen some pretty quick runs from our experienced dogs and knew he wasn’t in the hunt for a placing really. Of course I didn’t stick to this but I still managed to get him to waste time as he ran through the contact; kind of slowed right down in his strides; looked at me to see if I was going to insist and by that time we were right in front of the next obstacle so I just let him go. Bad handler! I was an idiot and I should have made him do the lie down, it *will* happen at the next trial!! He also lay down nice and fast on the seesaw but way too early and I had to move him up a bit to get it to drop. More time wasted. He did a running contact on the aframe and by that time I was just in the mood to keep on running! So I did and he did and we ran clear for about 7th out of 14 quallies. Oh well another leg towards ADO2. He was then up in Masters Jumping straight after this and he ran a clear round but really no thanks to me! I think I was too wrapped up in thinking about where I should be instead of letting him know which way we were going clearly enough. Just about every tunnel exit had him turning the wrong way mostly due to me not saying anything to let him know which way until *after* he was out of the tunnel. Bit late by then really! I had a plan that totally went awry when I ran to places I hadn’t even intended to run to when I walked it. It was just messy and not smooth and I felt like we could have run that much faster and smoother. Never the less he still managed a pass in the top 6 placings so I was happy with that.
Raven’s Open Agility run felt absolutely thrilling, She was blasting through her running contacts, had the first 5 obstacles done before I could say much at all really as it was a fairly straight line. We were on track for a win when she slammed down that seesaw so quick and was off it before I had the chance to realise she had no chance of seeing the next jump which was perpendicular to the end of the seesaw and visible by one thin upright. She curved into me (because I didn’t say anything helpful like ‘Get Out’!) and ended up copping a refusal on the jump as she had passed the plane. Even with the time it took to bring her back round and get her to do the jump she was no more than half a second or so off the first place time. In Masters Jumping I made an assumption that was just simply wrong, I didn’t think she had much of a choice and thought I had turned my body enough to indicate clearly to take a tunnel, she took a jump. Then she came in on me when I layered the tunnel because my arm signal and verbal wasn’t clear enough and then we just had quite a few other off courses after that because I had pretty much obliterated whatever plan we were going for! She had a ball though and got her jackpot for keeping all the bars up. It was a good night! What I was really proud of her for was that we had 3 fast, incredibly exciting runs and she kept every single bar up! We’ve been doing some extra jump work this week and I think we’ll maintain it! It feels good to finish courses even if we’ve had a blip along the way. So now we wait again...no trials next weekend :-( but then we hit April with a trial every weekend and Adelaide at the end! I cannot believe how quickly the time is going...and still so much to do. Must admit it's certainly exciting to look forward to; so far 2100 runs planned for the weekend of the Nationals!