3rd Day at Wags for Wishes

What a day! Conor and I are finally starting to work as a team, and I'm getting a good feel for his timing. I still need to step it up a bit, as he is one fast little bugger, but I'm getting there! We started off with his FAST class, and it went just as planned. He got all the necessary points as well as the send bonus, so he qualified, finished in 3rd place and finished his title -- his first agility title!!! His Jumpers run was going along nicely, and then came the weaves. He'd missed all the entrances on all the previous runs throughout the weekend, so I fully expected him to miss the entrance again. I hung back a bit so I could call him back and re-send him, but by golly he hit the entrance perfectly, went through them in the blink of an eye and was off to the next couple of jumps before I could even realize what had just happened. He left me in the dust!! I tried to salvage the run, as by that point he hadn't gone off course, but I was just too far back and couldn't get where I needed to get to in time -- he was just way too fast. He eventually took a wrong jump, and I could hear the judge sigh. And in my head I heard my teacher Jim say "trust your dog." I should have trusted that he would have hit the pole entrance and not popped out. Next time I will! Then we ran his Standard course. Of course the tire jump was the first obstacle AGAIN! First day I tried placing him right in front of the tire . . . that didn't work. Second day I tried running from start line with him . . . that didn't work. This time I placed him pretty far back, did a nice lead out and bent down so he could see me through the tire hole and told him to jump, and by golly THAT WORKED -- he jumped THROUGH the tire instead of going under it!!! So far we're running clean. We made it through obstacle by obstacle, hitting everything perfectly, and hitting all his contacts. We get to the weave poles, and he does miss the entry, but in Novice Standard, refusals at the weaves aren't counted. I quickly get him back in, and he finishes them without popping out. We're getting pretty close to the end, and then comes the broad jump. It was at a very weird angle, so I was worried that he'd cut the corner again, but he made it over with no problems. Just 3 more obstacles, and we'd be done. I had to concentrate on each obstacle as they came, because I know if I think too far ahead, I mess up. And I didn't want to push him too hard over the teeter, as he does have a tendancy to fly off that if he's going too fast, so I kept cool, he hit the teeter contact, then over the last two jumps, and woooo hooo!! He ran clean!!! Conor got his first Novice Standard leg. And placed 3rd place to boot. It was so very exciting.

Kaylie's Jumpers run was very, very tricky, but lots of fun, and she ran clean and Q'd. No placements though -- it's pretty hard to place when some of the top people in the country are running against you with them darned Border Collies. But she was 11 seconds under time, so we got more points added towards our MACH speed points. Her Standard run was going along very nicely, but by golly that darned dog walk contact got us again. I swear they put poison down on those contacts. It was a great run otherwise, so I'm still very happy about that.

We're looking forward to next weekend for another AKC agility trial. I'm only showing Kaylie, so it shouldn't be so exhausting.