Flying Poodles

This is Ridiculous….

We spent Friday evening and all day Saturday at Argus Ranch for the EAT NADAC trial. Beautifully organized, ran very smoothly.

The weather could not have been weirder. It snowed, rained, sleeted, hailed, and was sunny–often all five within fifteen minutes. At times you couldn’t hear anything inside the arena because of the noise of hail on the roof.

Elly and Dancer did very well. Friday night, Dancer and Elly both Q’d in the latest version of Hoopers–the first time we’ve run it, and Elly took fourth in 22.97 seconds in a highly competitive 16-inch skilled Novice group (about twenty dogs); Dancer took first in the tiny 20+-inch skilled Novice group of two dogs (22.19 seconds). They both were flawless, not only making for a great start to the weekend, but making me feel pretty good. Elly also got a Q but no place in Tunnelers, somehow making it about .1 second under time, her first ever Tunnelers Q. Dancer took a few extra tunnels, getting value-for-money but no Q.

On Saturday, our first run of the day was our first-ever run in Elite Regular. I haven’t been nervous for at least a year–we’ve been in Open for what seems like forever–and I was so visibly nervous that people around me–including the gate steward–kept telling me to “breathe!” Elly did me proud, covering my handling errors nicely, with a clean run only a few seconds over time. Since we were in Skilled, that meant she got half a Q. Very nice for our first showing.

We went right from the Regular ring over to the Touch N Go ring, where Elly ran like a screaming maniac dog with her tail on fire. She was twenty seconds UNDER time… and actually got one contact. She also got a grand total of 100 faults, which I thought was the maximum possible–until Dancer got 141.3 faults on HER Touch N Go run. She hates it when Elly does better than her.

Later in the day, Dancer managed her third Tunnelers Q and got her Novice Tunnelers title, making her:

Alchmys Magic Star Dancer NJP TN-N

EAT gave out a pretty ribbon for that title. By that time, my knee was starting to hurt fairly badly, and I definitely slowed both dogs down in Jumpers. Neither qualified, despite pretty and clean runs; they were over time by just a few seconds.