Raven has a win :-)

Tonight was Perth Training’s Agility and Jumping Trial. We definitely fared a bit better this Saturday than last! Raven was a star again and took 1st place in Masters Agility. It wasn’t smooth sailing in a number of places but her speed compensated for that. We had a brilliant run in Open Jumping apart from the 3rd bar from the end coming down. In Open Agility she kept all bars up I just managed to handle her into a refusal of a jump – my ugly early rear cross move came out. She also managed to miss the distance challenge (easier than last weeks but needing more handling than most people had given it). Masters Jumping was our first run of the night and she was handling like a mack truck on the opening going very wide all over the shop on all the turns, she eventually had a bar down so we stopped, replaced bar and withdrew.
Cypher was like a yoyo tonight – he did a lovely Masters Jumping run first up and was very smooth and surprisingly he ended up with a 4th place (he never feels like he is moving as fast as he could!). I think he is very efficient sometimes, deceptively so.
Next up was Open Agility and I handled a very poor 270 move that failed to execute at all, causing him to treat it like a pull through instead of going round the outside. However he then pulled his same stunt from last week on the weaves! Found the gap just fine on a difficult angle but then just ran straight through the gap past all the poles, now I watched this back on video (yay for Tim the videographer tonight) and there is no reason for what he did. It is quite bizarre. I have to think on this some more and see what to do. He nailed both sets of weaves in Masters Agility and Open Jumping. The entries were easier though so perhaps it is simply the unusual entry angle and I haven’t proofed them enough lately. I shall work on it. In Masters Agility I think he thought – “oh this is the same as the last course I just did” (And the opening did look exactly the same as Open had been nested with Masters) and went straight in the wrong end of the tunnel as Obstacle #2. I took him back and started again, recalling him straight to me then turning him into the tunnel. He then just about tripped me up as he cut me off to do the wrong end of the next tunnel we came across *sigh*. That was quite frustrating I must admit. Nailed the rest of the course quite nicely. His last run was Open Jumping and apart from one wide turn he was extremely responsive and running well. He ended up in 7th place on this one.
I ran Rumour on this Open Jumping course and she ran like a cracker! Unfortunately she just curved in a bit early before going out to a jump and got a refusal but other than that it went very smoothly and rapidly…she was fast tonight. The only other run I had was with the young red and white BC Dexter – I ran him in Excellent Jumping and again it was a lovely smooth run and we came in clear for a 3rd place which his owner Janice was very happy about! Looks like I am handling him at next weekend for the State Titles too so that will be fun.
So no luck on the ADM title front yet for Cypher, still sitting on 2 legs to go. I’m hoping he’s saving it up for the two trials then! Raven is running pretty well right now, I think the swimming has helped her jumping and as long as I can get my directions out clearly enough and early enough (but not too early) we should be right!