It's because it marks the occasion of our first (non-FAST) Open Q!!!!! And on a really tricky Standard course, no less! We have struggled mightily with the weave poles since moving up from Novice back in March (or April?). In trials, Cedar has been popping out pretty consistently at the 10th pole. And, being a Border Collie, she pattern trains very easily, which is a concern when it's a "bad" pattern :-P. After a few trials with weave troubles, I have decided to significantly step up my proofing efforts.
This weekend was the Idaho Capital City Kennel Club's summer AKC trial. I've always wanted to run at this trial because it's close to home (well, my old home) and I have watched agility trials at this venue for years. This year, we finally got a chance to compete. Being in July, it was freakin' HOT, and the metal roof did not make things better. But all in all I had a blast. We ended up with 2/6 Q's, one in FAST and one in *(yay!) Open Standard. We had a lot of really nice runs that weren't Q's, with just small mistakes. Saturday we NQ'd both Standard and JWW because of the weaves. Yesterday, after spending some time after the trial proofing, we managed to get the weaves (all 12 :D) and Q in Standard. We would have had a JWW Q as well, but for an uncharacteristic back jump during an awkward moment on course. Oh well.
Overall, I was super happy with how Cedar ran for me this weekend, as well as my handling. I just felt like we both pretty much had our sh*t together and were working well as a team. There was a lot of good to be found in our runs from this past weekend, that's for sure! I am confident that once our weave pole issue is fixed, we'll be unstoppable!
Here's a video of our Open Std Q from yesterday:
Onward and upward!
Yay! Glad it went well for you.
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