Agility Overdose

Ugg. No other word can describe tonight. For all my excitement, my dog was not in it. It's times like this when I'm on an agility high and ready to do it every moment I possibly can that I really wish I had a second dog - NOT because I need another one or love Vegas any less, but because I can only push her so hard before she turns tail and snubs me. I think that's what she did tonight and that does not bode well for this weekend. I hope I can sufficiently appease her tomorrow with a day off and not have a miserable trial weekend.

Anyway, I digress. Tonight we ran second and started with the standard run. It was a fairly complex course made up of 20 obstacles. There was quite a bit of contact discrimination which we didn't have issue with. The biggest issue I had was Vegas just wanting to ignore obstacles and that burns the clock when I have to constantly bring her back around. I will give her big kudos for completing her weaves again beautifully - not the first time, but once she did them in her standard run it was gorgeous. The run was clean (I think) but the time allowed for us was 70 seconds and well, yeah, our time was 98 and change. Ugg.

So in between our first and our second run, Miss Vegas had to be kenneled. She hates her crate. Okay, perhaps it's not the crate so much. After all, she would have acted similarly infantile had I leashed her to a hook on the wall. It's really all about not being with the mama. But alas, my job was to judge/scribe/time tonight, so I couldn't hang out with her. I don't think this impacted her performance, but wow was she noisy! An hour later we ran second again for Jackpot. Same course as standard but just accumulate a ton of points in opening and closing. Typical point accumulation with all contacts and weaves being 5 points, all circles (closed & open tunnels plus tire) and spread/broad jump 3 points, and single jumps 1 point. I didn't walk the course too much cause I knew I didn't have much chance of mapping it out and succeeding. So, I went into it pretty much winging it. I wanted to do the weaves first and she refused. So, we went onto the dog walk which she did twice back to back. I think Vegas might have taken another single jump and maybe the tire and that was about it - for the entire opening and closing! Double ugg! Yeah, not good. I think our points might have been about 15 total. Most people had a minimum of 35 or 40. Let's just say our score will be the one dropped off tonight - at least for Jackpot.

This whole off mode for her is new. I'm used to her barreling into a course with glee. I really think I have overdosed her and am realizing that one trial a month is plenty and perhaps skipping league or practice right before a trial might even be in order. Or, I need to figure out how to get her drive up and entice her to play before. I guess it'll be something I have to work on and use trial and error and perhaps prayer to figure out. Stay tuned....