Flying Poodles

In which Elly shows off the poodle sense of humor….

Dancer and Elly and I traveled north to the ZAP trial at Argus last weekend. It was far and away the most successful trial I’ve been to in months. Dancer got five Qs–and much more importantly, got her contacts EVERY SINGLE RUN. She got her second Q in Novice Touch N Go; two Qs in Novice Regular, an Open Hoopers Q (and her HP-O title), and an Open Weavers Q.

Elly got one Q, in Open Hoopers–she ran the same handling path as Dancer and ran it faster, winning her class.

Elly displayed her poodle humor relentlessly. In her first run on Saturday, the course went hoop-hoop-frame-left end of tunnel. Elly held her start line and then flew through the hoops, got her contact nicely on the frame, ran right up to the left end of the tunnel, put her nose in, then stopped dead and looked back at me. “This end? You sure?” “Get in!” “OK!”… and she turned and got in the RIGHT end of the tunnel, came out flying. The judge was standing right behind the tunnel and I could see her laughing. I was laughing. I could hear every watching person laughing. She had a lovely run from there, with beautiful fast weaves. You have to admire the attitude.

Elly weaves, photo by Joe Camp

Dancer stunned me with her focus and her contacts on Saturday. Our first run was Touch N Go, and there were two dogwalks and an a-frame. This is the contact on the dogwalk:

Dancer's dogwalk contact, photo by Joe Camp

Notice that I am behind her and she still stopped exactly where I wanted her to. I held the contact and told her she was fabulous–and she took third in class.

In regular, her dogwalk was perfect but she stopped for a moment at the top of the a-frame, to do her poodle frame-grazing thing. I was about to talk to her about it, but instead I leaned over and patted Fluffy, the imaginary perfect dog, and praised her beautiful contact. Dancer came right down the frame, an indignant look on her face, and right into contact position. Yes, there’s a video, but it will be a few days before I get that posted.

Dancer a-frame contact, photo by Joe Camp

Official results:

Dancer:

Novice Touch N Go 169 yards, SCT 52, 46.35 seconds, 3rd place
Novice Regular 1 134 yards, SCT 48.73, 36.25 seconds, 2nd place
Novice Regular 2 134 yards, SCT 48.73, 36.79 seconds, 2nd place
Open Hoopers 29.59 seconds, SCT 40 seconds, 2nd place
Open Weavers 133 yards, SCT 38, 28.74 seconds, 4th place

Elly:

Open Hoopers 29.32 seconds, SCT 44 seconds, 1st place