Sno King 15th Anniversary Trial at Argus Ranch

Wow, is it warm out! The Pacific Northwest still surprises me and I'm a native! We went from 'holy nasty' (sideways blowing rain, several inches sometimes in a day, hail, dark clouds, cold, blowing wind) to 'hip hip hooray for spring' in the blink of an eye. Most people were running around in t-shirts today and I even saw some shorts and capris. What a great way to spend the weekend!

We got to Argus this morning about 10:25 with the expectation that first dog would be on the line at 11:30 am. Today they were running excellent classes only and no Fast all weekend. My youngest son is with me this weekend and has been a great helper. All the video I get from our runs is compliments of his willingness to be his mom's helper. So after we got all set up and the dogs walked & pottied, it was mostly a lot of hurry up and wait. They ran the standard course first and then the JWW after (only one judge today). Fortunately they have two rings so the JWW course was set up already and we had time to walk it (and walk it and walk it). I was able to watch Craig run a couple of his Dobermans too, and otherwise worked in one ring, walked Vegas, warmed her up, and walked my course over and over analyzing it from every angle and trying to think out and be prepared for any eventuality. There were a couple of areas that gave me concern just because of my ability to maintain momentum while still getting Vegas where I needed her to take the jump. Here is the course:

For starters, just getting from 1 to 2 without overshooting I was slightly concerned about, mostly since I can't really lead out on Vegas. But, as you'll see from the video, she handled it wonderfully and was responding well to my 'Craig Move' (the opposite arm thrown up in the air). However, I did not account for her wanting so desperately to take that inviting red tunnel. LOL. We'll need to work on that the rest of the weekend...namely me giving her queues earlier.

The other challenge was getting in a front cross after 10 or 11 so that I had better directional control for #13. As you can tell, I didn't queue her quite soon enough and she was tempted by the tunnel again. Fortunately without having taken those obstacles she wasn't off course. I'm excited to say she nailed the weaves again though - and as you can hear in the background, Craig is reminding me to step in on her to make sure she knew what I wanted her to do. :) The rest was pretty smooth sailing and while we didn't score a full 100 as we were slightly over time, it was a clean run otherwise and our second Excellent A JWW leg. (On a note related to the time, Craig said the course was wheeled slightly off and the time should have been a bit longer...so while we were technically 1.65 seconds over on the time given, she would have been under if it was measured correctly. Always interesting to know and learn from a former judge....). Without further ado, here is the video and I'm off to bed so we can get up and head out early in the morning for Day 2.