In agility class this morning, Noodle was
On another note, Dolphin had scent work class last night and he is doing fantastic. We have made huge strides this year. I haven't trialed him in over a year, but I mailed my entries to a small local trial in November to see if our training/no trialing has paid off. November is going to be crazy and jam-packed...just you wait and see what's in store! Insanity!!!
The day started off pretty good. Pizza had the first agility class today. We did two runs and she was darn near perfect - zero visits, nice and focused. After our second run (in which she was really fast and drive-y), we celebrated as we walked off the course and I noticed her limping. I took her outside and walked and trotted her around and she is definitely limping pretty significantly - looks like maybe her right front? That was the end of class for us. It's so unusual, in 6+ years this is the first time I have ever seen Pizza sore. She is usually a brick house and never shows any discomfort, so I can only imagine how much she must be hurting to be limping this strongly. Of course, I am trying hard not to panic and imagine all these worst-case scenarios. I brought her home and gave her some anti-inflammatories, and let her rest all day. I cancelled my field training with her tomorrow.
Dolphin was
Noodle and I went to a rally trial in Hamilton, Ohio. I am still chasing those triple QQQ's and points towards our RACH (Rally Championship). We need 5 more triple QQQ's and 49 master points. Well, we got one more triple QQQ torday but
We redeemed ourselves with a 99 in Excellent and 3rd place, and then a 96 in Advanced. Not the day I had hoped for, and not getting any master points puts us behind in getting this title done. I feel like I am racing the clock with Noodle. I took those early years for granted. I'll never do that again!
So Saturday I woke up at 4:30am to head to the rally trial. yesterday I woke up at 4:15 am to go judge a field trial. Today I had to wake up at 4:15 am to go to a rare Monday agility trial. This trial sounded like a good idea 2 months ago when I entered, but man it was difficult waking up this early for the third day in a row.
Let's just sum up the day by saying that waking up early was
Dolphin had a stellar day also. He got a Q and 1st place in 24" FAST, he won the 24" Time 2 Beat, and he got a Q and 1st place in Standard. One stinking bar (the triple) kept him from another Q and 1st place in Jumpers, and a quadruple QQQQ. Kind of a bummer...if he had to knock ONE bar I wish it had been in FAST or T2B, but it is what it is. Dolphin was wonderfully focused today, zero mistakes on his part other than the knocked bar in the last class.
I did kind of an interesting experiment today. Several years ago my coach and I decided to get rid of Dolphin's start line stay as it was stressing him a little bit and then he would shut down on his run. It has worked wonders, as once we removed that (plus changed his stopped contacts to running), he gained confidence and a ton of speed. Not having a start line stay has been a bit of a problem for me in some courses. I have done a lot of them in practice and in class and he does fine, so I decided to try one in Time 2 Beat. I lead out past the first jump and called him...he stood up, shook, and stressed a bit, barely making it over the jump and into the weaves. After the third obstacle (tunnel) he got his confidence back and ran awesome, but the first three obstacles were definitely slow and a bit stressed. It was good to try this, so now I know that our start line stay has to stay away (sadly). I have no idea why that stresses him but it does. Silly boys!
Yesterday Noodle had agility class and she was fantastic - really fast and was perfect the entire class. I can't tell you how relieved I am that she is back to normal. By normal I mean her 'new' normal, not the normal she was 5+ years ago, but hey, I'll take it!
We switched Pizza and Dolphin's classes today as an experiment to put more pressure on Pizza being in a class with strange dogs and people. She did wonderfully! I could tell she was a little stressed, but it only showed up in her speed (which was ever so slightly slower than normal). We had another class of zero visits and zero issues!
My coach feels like we are getting closer to being ready to try a trial, but we want to make sure we don't rush it or cause our training to take any steps backward. She is going to schedule some public run-thrus in the next month, and actually checked with my schedule to make sure she schedules them on a day I can make it. Our tentative plan is to have run-thrus on the Saturday after Thanksgiving. It will be a trial-like setting, with other dogs, the timer, judges and ring crew, etc. This will give us a little idea of whether she is really ready to enter in a trial. I am so hopeful! I will be the happiest person on earth if we have finally conquered Pizza's visiting problem. She is my best agility dog, and I love running her.
Noodle and I did some field training with a friend of ours. She was pretty much perfect on 5 birds she pointed. She actually got better and better with each bird. She also had to do a bunch of honoring. Her first honor was stellar - we came out of the woods and she was honoring the pointing dog. It was beautiful! Her honors started losing some intensity after each one, I think she has a mental limit as to how many times she will honor before she wants to ignore it. I can't say I blame her, but I still made her honor every time the opportunity ame about. We worked in the field for well over an hour, and she was wonderful. She was running and hunting well. She wasn't running to the county line like she used to a few years ago, but I have to keep reminding myself that she is over 9 years old now and we all slow down a bit with age. I was just thrilled she was so much better than just a few months ago when she was walking and barely trotting in the field. She definitely feels a lot better. I have no idea what was going on with her the past 4 months, but I am beyond happy that she seems to be getting over it and feeling her normal self again.
This weekend was an agility trial at one of our favorite local-ish places to trial in Zanesville. It's a fairly big 2 ring trial. Let me just start off by saying I had probably the
Friday started off with FAST (send was jump-jump-wrap back to jump) which Dolphin nailed with a first place. Standard - nailed, with a 1st place. Jumpers - nailed with a 2nd place. Time 2 Beat - nailed, with a 1st place. Yep...today was another
I steeled myself to not have overly high expectations for Saturday. It started out as I expected, with an NQ in FAST (he missed the 2nd jump in the send). However, He had a beautiful standard Q for 1st place, and a nice Jumpers Q for 2nd place. He took an off-course in Time 2 Beat, but we still ended the day with
Sunday started off with FAST - he had a nice Q on a tough send (A-Frame to 2 serp jumps) and 3rd place. I finished my course in 18 seconds, waaaaay under the allowed 32 seconds. Maybe I should have gone for more points, but I wanted to keep it simple and easy for him as it was day 3 and we were both tired. Standard was next, and he had a weird mistake when we had a jump that wrapped 180 back to another jump and he missed the second jump for an NQ. Bummer! However, he redeemed himself with a very trappy Jumpers course - a Q and 3rd place. We finished out the day with a great Time 2 Beat win - this finished his
It was a wonderful weekend, and especially wonderful to see all of my hard work and training finally come to fruition. We have worked so hard the past few years and were always missing the mark with just one tiny mistake in most of our runs. The best part about this weekend? 12 runs, and
This weekend I travelled to Dillwyn, Virginia to judge a hunt test, and to also run Noodle in a few master tests. I just can't bear to travel alone, so Noodle got to come along and be my travel partner. She, of course, LOVED the one-on-one time with me!
The hunt test did not go well for Noodle and I. I had her entered in 3 tests. The first test started great, she ran
The second test was a bit bogus, in my opinion. Noodle was doing awesome again (SO happy she was feeling good and running well!). Our brace mate had a point in the backfield - he was a very small Brittany and in some deep cover, and I couldn't see him at all. Noodle was running, and got to about 5 feet from him when she finally saw him, and skidded on her brakes. She stood perfectly for her honor and never moved. However the judge made me pick her up as he said she was 'in the scent cone' and didn't stop early enough. I found that to be a bit unfair as even I couldn't see the dog until we were really close. At the judging seminar we were specifically told that we cannot judge whether a dog got in the scent cone and stopped as we were not dogs and we cannot judge what we don't really know. Disappointing, for sure, but it is what it is.
Our third test was definitely Noodle's fault, and one of her worst in years! In the back field we came out of the woods to find Noodle standing on a hill bonoring the pointing dog below from a good distance. It was a beautiful sight to see! When we got into the bird field, Noodle hunted awesome - she covered a ton of ground and went from cover to cover, probably the nicest I have ever seen her hunt. Unfortunately when she went on point, she broke on the shot. By broke, I mean she actually took off when the bird was shot, and completed the retrieve.
