Yesterday was a rough day. I beat up on myself pretty bad. I'm used to doing well at what I do and I have also gotten used to Vegas' and my 70% success rate at CPE trials. As of the end of day 2, we had just one Q out of 6 runs. That was a tough pill to swallow. I realize it's a different venue (only our 2nd AKC trial); I realize it is a stressful environment (big building, more people, lots of noises); I realize it's a different surface (rubber matting as opposed to dirt). But I set my goals high and I hate to fail. So, without further ado, here are the courses and some comments.
As you can see from the faint highlighting, this is the course I chose to run Vegas on. She did everything precisely. The only hiccup we had was missing our down contact on the a-frame by about 2". That made for an automatic failure to complete the obstacle and we NQd. That was a bummer because it was a beautiful run otherwise and she had plenty of time.
Vegas ran our standard course quite beautifully but we ended up NQing again because of a single knocked bar. My friend, Jami, said I turned my shoulder a smidgen too early and pulled her off the jump too soon causing her to shift her legs mid-air and knock the bar down.
All in all, day 2 was a tough one and I went to bed very early as I was pretty darn frustrated.
Day 3 dawned a better day though as Vegas was awesome in a JWW course that I thought would give us trouble. You'll notice after jump 2, 6, and 11, another jump is directly ahead and in each instance the dog needs to head another direction. She didn't hesitate in listening to me and pulled it off like a champ. She earned her Novice Jumpers (NAJ) title this morning and our last day of the trial we'll try an Open level JWW run.
Our standard run was the last of the day today and we NQd on it because of time. The allotted time was 62 seconds; we were 82 and change. Vegas really does not like laying down in public and especially on the table. Prior to starting AKC she had only made contact with the table to end a run. Having to sit or down on the table has been a challenge and continues to be. However, today it was kind of my fault. I had her in a down relatively quickly then turned to get my landmark on the a-frame. She stood and took her sweet time laying down again, burning a lot of time. As it stands, we need 2 standard legs to finish our novice title.
Tomorrow is our last day. We have a JWW run and another Standard course. Instead of offering a FAST class today and tomorrow, they subbed ISC courses that were optional for Excellent competitors to enter. The winner of today's run is eligible to compete for a spot on the USA World Team. They were definitely fast dogs and a challenging course with tighter turns and lots of back-jumping and wrapping jumps.
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