Flying Poodles

One for Dancer, One for Elly

It was a remarkably good day and a half of trialing.

I had two big goals for the trial: good weaves and good leadouts.

Elly got her weaves in 3 out of four runs, first try, all twelve poles. The fourth time, I crowded her, she went in at the second pole. and came out at the eleventh. Entirely my fault, and still really really good, for a dog that hadn’t gotten her weaves the first time in a trial in literally months. For Elly, I got the one jump leadout for three of four runs–today it was obvious she needed the encouragement of running with me from the start. Her hips were sore. It was also obvious that today the first run needed to be the only run… I got her a massage from Janet (she loves that) and scratched the rest of the day. I was tired too, so no problem.

Dancer got her weaves in both runs yesterday–and got them on the second try today. She was going SO fast! (I forgot her lack of experience… my fault.) Dancer’s leadouts were perfect. Astonishing. In Novice Jumpers today, the course really benefited from the ability to do a two jump leadout pivot–and I could count on Dancer to let me do it. That was fun.

So what else was exciting? Saturday Dancer took FIRST PLACE in Novice Preferred Jumpers, 20″, beating five other dogs (always a bonus), with a time of 30.33 on a 106 yard course (3.5 yards/sec). That course finished with a two-jump straight line to a tunnel, and I told her “go tunnel” right at the first of the two jumps–and she accelerated the whole way to the tunnel. She didn’t look back to see where I was, just went for it. It was beautiful. Today, her JWW round was faster and even more fun… two tries at the weaves because she hit them going SO fast… and again a great “go tunnel” as she went twenty feet away from me to hit the tunnel going so fast I couldn’t keep up even though the tunnel turned back toward me, which is when she got the off-course… 37.24 seconds on a 119 yard course (SCT was 45 seconds) with two sets of weaves and two extra jumps (3.2 yps).

As for Elly, on Saturday we had a flawless Jumpers run, marred only slightly by the fact that I sent her to the wrong end of the tunnel. We’ve been practicing “out tunnel” (go to the farther entrance) and she did exactly what my feet and shoulders told her to do. Shame my feet were wrong. 40.35 seconds on a 133 yard course (NQ, SCT of 45 seconds) (2.96 yps). And Sunday, we got a Q in Jumpers… her first Open Jumpers Preferred Q. It wasn’t pretty, but it was a Q. Five-point fault for the runout when she had to run around me (I got in her way) and 2 seconds of overtime (2.89 yps)… but a 91-point Q is still a Q. And we were the only one in the 20″ preferred class to Q, so another FIRST. Cheap thrills, woot hoot!