First Day Trial 2007

Cloverdale Canine Companions held the first day trial for the year today and I think my brain overheated with the hot weather and the humidity! Sadly we only had one Q out of 10 runs and I managed one other Q with one of the other dog’s I ran. I also learnt a lesson about not overdoing it the day before a trial with my two, swimming and some equipment work for an hour or so really took it out of them today. Raven felt somewhat slower than usual and Cypher’s muscles were feeling it I believe. His weaving skills also departed around half way through the day. In Masters Agility he was right on track for entering the weave poles until I mistakenly thought I’d have to straighten his line put a ‘Come’ in which he responded to instantly and I ended up putting him into the weavers at the 2nd gap. In Masters Jumping I just let go of his head a bit too early (no I am not physically holding him…I’m talking about that invisible line between your hands and the dog’s head) and he went over an off course jump. In Open Jumping (this was around lunchtime) he lost his weaving skills and we have no idea where they went, I hung back to pull him into a tricky entry and was pleased to see him head straight into the first gap and then dismayed when he ran straight through the gap as if the poles were not even there! Weird! Open Agility class had a rather crazy distance challenge so I ran over the line with him to save the confusion. I’m glad I did there was not one clear round out of 27 dogs entered. However he also got out of sync in the weavers in there and missed a couple. So really Open Jumping was the only one I could wonder what he was thinking instead of me knowing that I was definitely responsible!

Raven had a brilliant day herself, she kept her bars up in all four runs – she is such a star. Again I messed the weaver entry up in Masters Agility….not the same way I might add! I had realised Cy didn’t need any direction and I had stuffed him up by giving direction so I figured I’d just shut up on this one…turns out Raven needed to know where we were going, she tried to self correct but ended up entering the poles from the wrong side. It was too bad as that was our only fault, it was a really nice run apart from that. In Masters Jumping I completely got myself into the wrong place by running too hard into a pocket and thus caused her to take an off course jump. This is starting to sound familiar! In Open Jumping I changed side when I really didn’t need to causing her to take more off course jumps. In Open Agility in a futile attempt to complete the distance challenge at the end since we had run clear up until this stage I ended up putting her into an off course tunnel. She didn’t care she still got her sausage jackpot at the end of every run and had a heap of fun running the Excellent Gamblers course in the afternoon. I followed my plan right up until about the last three obstacles where I put her over the dog walk in the opposite way to what I had intended thus causing us to lose some time getting to the gamble when the whistle blew. This still gave us a very respectable 2nd place for which I was extremely grateful for! I also ran Rumour for a 3rd place and her title in Novice Gamblers. Cypher could not do one set of weaves in the opening sequence and instead of changing my plan instantly to make up for this I stupidly attempted them at least three more times before giving up and going straight to the contacts, hence we were 6 points short in the Opening sequence however he did the four poles in the gamble section beautifully of course! Suchis the humour of the agility pixies or fairies (see the Editorial in the latest Clean Run Magazine).
So we went home tired, hot, sweaty but not completely without any passes, and hey a chance to run Agility all day is fine by me! We now wait till next Saturday night to trial again at Perth Training’s event. I have included some pics below of the dogs from today since Tim was able to get out and take some pics again. Also a really nice story from today’s trial is about Stoli’s debut, read about Stoli here and you’ll know what I mean. She had a go at Novice Jumping and didn’t do too bad at all! I have included a couple of Tim’s pics of her below.

The Raven Dog Walk - only 1.8 seconds today, feeling a bit tired *g*
But still completely reckless and irresponsible of me
allowing her to move at over 6mps on this obstacle!

Again with the speed thing!

Cypher going very well as it was the tyre *before* those weavers!

Stoli - looking pretty as a picture

Stoli's first go at Novice Jumping - she kept all her bars up, it
was just that tunnel shape that stumped her!