"It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop."

My training pal and I headed a couple hours north to Cleveland for the agility trial at CAPS Fieldhouse. This weekend was all about the Dolphinator. It was a bipolar sort of weekend, so many ups and downs it left my head spinning! Here is the agility recap:

FRIDAY - FAST: Dolphin was kind of slow, but OK. Send bonus was tunnel, jump, and wrap back to tunnel. He got it, plus the points, so it was a Q!
FRIDAY - Standard: Dolphin missed the teeter (3rd obstacle, he angled towards the A-Frame by mistake). I circled him back around to get the teeter, and he shut down completely. We skipped a couple jumps and I got him running and got his confidence back, and he actually got the weaves (first time in a couple months!) and finished fairly strong.
FRIDAY - Jumpers: Dolphin started super slow. The weaves were obstacle #6, he was very slow through them but got it. I cheered like a crazy person and we went on, and he gradually picked up speed. It was a Q but it was a rather slow Q.
FRIDAY T2B: Dolphin knocked the 2nd bar. He got to the weaves, went in and walked out. I did a Fix n Go to do the jump in to the weaves and he bypassed them completely. I had to go on, so we just did a few more obstacles to get him running and then I finished. Ugh.
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SATURDAY - FAST: The send was jump, jump, wrap back to jump. He missed the 2nd jump of the send and was running great, so I opted to train and do the tunnel to the weaves, which he NAILED with a ton of speed! YESSS!
SATURDAY - Standard: Dolphin ran really well. I did not support a jump and he missed it, so I just went on as if it wasn;t there, he finished nice and string and it was overall a very good run (other than he did miss his A-Frame contact but it wasn't called).
SATURDAY - Jumpers: I have no idea why, but Dolphin went into this class with zero energy and effort. He knocked THREE bars, walked out of his weaves, and after I did a fix n go he nailed the weaves and did well.
SATURDAY - T2B: Dolphin ran this pretty darn well with zero faults - a Q and 2nd place.
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SUNDAY - FAST: The boy was on fire for this class! The send was the same as yesterday - jump, jump, wrap back to jump. He nailed it with a HUGE jumping effort and tons of speed. He was flying, it was awesome - Q!
SUNDAY - Standard: Dolphin was still on fire, ran a bee-yoo-tiful standard course with speed for a nice Q and 21 MACH points!
SUNDAY - Jumpers: I was the most proud of this run, even though we didn't Q (yes folks, we blew a Triple QQQ!). This was Dolphin's best run of the weekend - big striding jumping effort, speed, accuracy (in the face of MANY off course options)!. He knocked a bar, but honestly I could care less! See video below ~

So my recap is complete confusion. Dolphin was SO up and down all weekend, and then Sunday, when I thought he would be tired, he was absolutely amazing in every class. I just can't get a handle on what is going on in that boy's head. He keeps me guessing, for sure.

One possible thought - I was doing a "jackpot" after every class - I would run out of the ring with him celebrating (no matter what), and my friend was at the exit gate waiting with my treat bag and I gave him tons of treats and praise. He was eating it up, and by Sunday he was coming out of the ring extremely excited. Could this be what is finally working for us? I don't know, but we have another agility trial in 3 weeks so I guess we shall see.

We did have a lot of fun hiking in Cuyahoga National Park in the evenings after the trial each day. It was so beautiful, and great to relax and just enjoy our time together.

On Monday evening I took Noodle to our local bird dog club's training night. She was pretty stellar, having a couple really nice honors (her second one was spectacular!) and a nice solid point from a good distance. It was hot hot hot out there, so we kept it short and to the point. She was in her happy place, as was I.

I know it's kind of silly, but when I see her work in the field I just can't imagine feeling happier. She is totally in her glory, and it is so fantastic to share that joy together in the field. Yeah, I know, I am waxing poetic here, but it truly is amazing to watch. It's extra amazing when you think about how far we have come. Just think about how out of control she was several years ago, and I wondered how on earth I could ever train her. Well, I managed to train her and keep her joy intact...Priority #1.

ON Tuesday morning it was Dolphin and Pizza's turn. I bright them out to train with a friend of mine. Both dogs were spot on perfect! Dolphin had several really nice points, one of them from a nice distance. He was steady as a rock. His honoring was, well, you know...it's a work in progress.

Pizza was outstanding. She did her usual dramatic honors, plus she was solid on point. My friend came out and gunned for us, so she had an opportunity to do a little retrieving on one bird. Her first retrieve was nice, but she dropped it about 2 feet from me. I whoa-ed her and threw the bird again, this time she brought it all the way back. Hopefully this fall Dolphin will be ready to start retrieving again. We shall see, that boy has his own timeline!

Noodle had agility class this morning. She was fantastic. She didn't slow down until the very last sequence. I loved the fact that I was able to work her in the ring with other people and dogs, and she never lost focus. What a good girl she has become!

I did a drop-in class with Pizza in the afternoon. The class was full of high-energy, LOUD barking dogs. The cacophony made her a little bit nervous at the beginning, but we worked through it and she was amazing in class. Man, this girl is so freaking talented. ON Saturday we are going to do a UKI agility trial for something different. The courses should be nice and big and open, great for a big dog. Plus the trial will be smaller, so she should hopefully be a little more relaxed. Stay tuned!

Today was an agility-packed day. I started off the morning with Pizza at a drop-in class, she did great, even with the class full of loud barking dogs. Immediately afterwards I had Dolphin's regular agility class. He actually did pretty well, didn't poop out on me until the very last sequence, so that is a plus.

In the evening my friend and I got together to train in my agilty yard. Man, we had a blast! I worked both Pizza and Dolphin. Both dogs were awesome. We worked on some crazy hard weave entrances, 3-jump serpentine, A-Frame criteria, and the higher tire for Pizza, since she is trialing in UKI on Saturday (their tire is 4" higher than AKC). It was a great evening, the dogs were awesome and ran great even in the heat and high humidity. I, however, needed an oxygen mask when I was done. #outofshape

Dolphin had to go to the vet today. He has a sore on the inside of his toe. I think he got it when we were field training on Tusday. I noticed it it later on Tuesday when I went to do his nails. He's not sore on it (although he is a big baby when I mess with it - he HATES his toes being touched!). It doesn't seem to bother him at all, but since I still have some lingering PTSD after Noodle's nasty toe wound back in the fall, this gal ain't taking no chances. My vet agreed that it is superficial, he gave me some antibiotics and antibiotic wipes to use for the next week or so. It certainly doesn't slow this boy down at all!

Later in the morning I took Noodle to train with a friend of mine at the bird dog club. We were able to shoot over her, and my goal was to work on her staying steady without that jump when she sees the bird shot. The first bird was shot and she did jump forward about a foot, enough for me to correct her. That was good. She did a beautiful retrieve to hand. We only had a pigeon for the second bird, so we put the pigeon in a tip up and set the fresh quail next to it. When Noodle went on point, I flushed the pigeon, we shot the big gun in the air, and as she watched the pigeon I threw the dead quail in the same direction. Of course, she was steady as a rock, and did another nice retrieve. She's no dummy, she knows when she is being set up.

The best thing about the day was Noodle's honoring. She gave me two beautiful honors, from a really nice distance away. At one point we were across the field and she came up over the hill and saw her bracemate waaaaay on the other side, stopping to get a drink, and she hit her brakes. YESSSSS! She had to honor a third time, and this time she did try to slyly avoid the situation (can't blame her), but when I called to her and made her come in the direction of her bracemate, she did stop. I am just so thrilled with how far she has come on her honoring. I never ever would have guessed it. This gives me hope for Dolphin!

Here are a couple photos of Noodle honoring, just because I am so excited about it!

Well, it was good, it was bad, and it wasn't really ugly...but it sure wasn't pretty.

I ran Pizza in 4 classes at the UKI trial. She was entered in Novice, so the courses were very nice (harder than AKC novice, but not as hard as Master). The courses were nice and open with great spacing between jumps - perfect for her.

I was hoping to report that we had at least one successful run where she stayed with me and didn't visit the bar setter, but alas that wasn't the case. She visited in every single run. Her first run (agility) she was actually clean, but she visited for just long enough (twice) in flow that she went over time. She also nailed her weaves on the first try in her first run (after she did her two visits) - awesome! After that, her visits were quicker the next two runs, but she garnered refusals and off courses when she jumped some jumps on her way back to me. The last run she visited for an extended amount of time before I could get her back, but man she finished strong!

I love running her, she is by far my best and most talented dog, but I have to be honest in saying I was mentally crushed that after taking well over a year off of trials to build her confidence and her focus, she still left me in every single run to visit bar setters.

Next Sunday she is entered in a local AKC trial. After that I do not have her entered anywhere as I need to see how that goes and the re-evaluate my training program yet again.

Leave it to Noodle to brighten my mood. She does tend to come through just when I need her most. Today we hit a rally trial in Dayton. Noodle earned the highest score she has ever in Master - a 98. Now keep in mind, this is only the 5th time I have even done Rally Master, but it was nice to hit a high note today. She was pretty darn good. We got a 99 in Excellent and a 99 in Advanced, for a triple QQQ and her 10th double QQ to earn her RAE TITLE! Funny, but this was the title I figured I would go for and then stop. Now that I've had some success with Master, I have the bug and I'd like to contine on to her RACH (Rally championship). Hey, why not?

It was a hot one today, but a couple friends came over anyways and brought their dogs to do some agility training. We had a blast - dogs had a blast, it was just a lot of fun to try some new things, run some rotten courses, and critique each other. I love these evenings.

We braved the heat and headed to the local bird dog club for their mock field trial/training day. They had 10 braces of dogs, and 4 birds were planted for each brace in a nice 30 minute course.

Noodle was first of my three. I knew she wasn't feeling well - she hadn't finished her meals the past few days and seemed a bit lethargic at home. Of course, she sparked up when we released in the field, but it didn't last. She ran well, had two nice honors, but went birdless, mainly due to the fact that she was laboring in the heat and with her stomach upset. Poor girl. When we got back to the van at the end of her brace, she flopped down in her crate and napped the rest of the day.

Pizza was next, and she was wonderful. The heat got to her and she did slow down considerably in the second half of her brace, but she had several nice honors (no big surprise there!) and a gorgeous point from a good distance, and she stood solid as a rock. So fun!

Dolphin was last, and it was really toasty by the time he ran. As I expected, he had no stamina in the heat. However, he had a beautiful honor all on his own, and he stayed facing the other dog and didn;t turn back towards me! PROGRESS! Slowly but surely he is getting it. He finally went on point way towards the end of the brace, and it was a nice solid point (although it was in a big patch of poison ivy...yay). All in all it was a pretty nice day for everyone. Of course, any time you can get in the field with some quail and your dogs, it's beyond nice.

Because I am a glutton for punishment, I had the girls entered in a local agility trial today. Noodle was still feeling pretty bad, so I was tempted to pull her. She livened up later in the morning and gave me a pretty nice jumpers Q, followed by a stuggle-bus standard and FAST Q, to earn Double QQ #6 and Triple QQQ #4! This girl is all heart. I know she didn't feel the greatest, but she tried her best and didn't a single foot wrong. Her times were really slow, but she was accurate, which means she really tried hard. Her jumping was a struggle - I can tell when she has a flare up that the effort to stretch over jumps is hard. She slowed down on the jmping, but flew through the weaves - much easier on her stomach apprently. I love this girl to pieces because she will do anything for me. That's a great gift, and I have to be careful not to overdo it.

Well, what can I say about Pizza? 4 runs, zero Q's. She visited in every single run, several times her visit was to the judge. However, each time when I got her back, she ran fantastic and finished clean - her contacts were 100% perfect 2 on 2 off, and she nailed her weaves on the first try in Jumpers and Standard - that is HUGE! So although we didn't Q, I feel like we have made progress since last year, because her contacts and weaves completely fell apart a year ago. I am staying upbeat and positive with her, and giving her lots of positive feedback during her run so she knows how happy I am with her. I will keep at it, because she is definitely worth it!

Sunday started off a week of hellish heat - every single day in the mid 90's and humidity that is off the charts. Needless to say, I didn't get much done outside this week. However, we did have our usual agility classes (in a/c, thank goodness). This week was one of those weeks that just lifts you up and makes you believe all things are possible. All three dogs were amazing this week. We focused on a lot of tunnels in class - mainly tunnel exits. Noodle, of course, hates tunnels with a passion. She actually did pretty good until the very end of class, when she was DONE with all of those damn tunnels. I did a drop in class with Pizza on Wednesday afternoon and she was fantastic!!! Never once did she even look at anyone sitting in the ring, she was focused, fast, enthusiastic, and a BLAST to run.

Dolphin had class on Thursday morning. He was amazingly good! Instead of using his toy or ball, I tossed a treat on the ground after the tunnel when we were working individually on tunnel exits, and this totally fired him up. He ran beautifully for the entire class, with very few mistakes. Later in the evening, I rented the building with a friend of mine and we trained the boys together, and Dolphin was fantastic yet again - lots of speed and enthusiasm.

I tell you, when I have weeks like this, I completely forget about how frustrated I was in the past thousand weeks. Weeks like this are what keeps me going. I am foolish enough to walk away with this little glow of optimism, like maybe we all turned a corner and things are going to start progressing rapidly? Just maybe??? I guess we shall see...soon.

I left this weekend completely unscheduled because I wanted a weekend off from agility. Yeah RIGHT. Instead, I had the opportunity to run Pizza in a full unsanctioned trial for testing purposes. If you remember, in April of 2023 I had all three of my dogs participate in a testing day, where they put sensors on my dogs (sensors on the collar) and ran them on the flat, over a contact obstacle, over a jump, and weaves. This was to test out the sensor. Today we took it a giant step forward. There were magnetic sensors on all of the jumps, entrance and exit of tunnels, both ends of the weaves, and the contacts. The dogs all wore a collar with a sensor on it. Cameras were set up in all 4 corners of the ring, and we ran trial-style in four courses - Master Standard, Premier Standard, Master Jumpers, and Premier Jumpers. The sensors calculated speed, motion (lead changes and turns), altitude (height of jump), even barometric pressure (going into tunnels).

Pizza ran fantastic, but she did have a visit in every single run. However, as soon as she came back from the visit she ran fantastic - perfect stopped contacts, awesome weaves, great speed. It was a LONG, HOT day - we were there from 8am until 6pm, temps outside were in the high 90's and the building a/c couldn't keep up and it was pretty miserable. BUT, it was a fun day!

On Sunday, I added Dolphin to the mix, and we did some specialized testing of a line of jumps. The jumps were set up on an electronic mat that calculated pressure (when the dog landed after the jump). The dogs wore the sensor collar again, and we did multiple repetitions where the jumps were spaced closer and farther apart.

Of course, the first 2 runs Pizza had to leave the line to go visit everyone sitting behind the computers, but after that she ran at least 8 more times perfectly! Dolphin ran crazy fast (I had his favorite ball in my hand, go figure!) and knocked a lot of bars in his exuberance. He never even looked at the people around him, but he had a tendency to jump off to the side of the jump instead of centered, so he had to do extra repetitions in order to get the correct data from landing on the mats in the center. All in all it was a fun day, and the geek in my was really jonesing all of this!

Mark and I loaded up the RV and headed to Latrobe, PA for an agility trial with Dolphin and Noodle. It was a nice chance for us to get away together, since we can rarely travel now with the old guys at home that need so much care. We left them in the care of our trusty dog sitters, and took a little 3 day break to head east to an agility trial.

The trial started off pretty rough for me and both dogs, but by the end we had a pretty nice success! Noodle ended up with a Double QQ on Friday and a Triple QQQ on Saturday, finishing her MJP (Master Jumpers Preferred) title. Kind of crazy that she has to start all over with her master preferred titles when she has regular Bronze Master titles in everything, but that's the way AKC rolls, I guess.

Dolphin struggled a bit on Thursday and I was feeling pretty down about how he ran (or didn't run), but he got it together on Friday and on Saturday he was one knocked bar short of a Triple QQQ...so close! Here is the breakdown of my runs for the three days:

THURSDAY:
    ★ FAST - Noodle and Dolphin both did great. Send was Tunnel - jump - in to a second tunnel. Both dogs Q'd.
    ★ Standard - Dolphin came out of the weaves at pole #2 from sheer lack of energy. I didn't support a jump and we missed it but went on and finished strong. Noodle knocked a bar, then missed a jump when she went over to the ring fence to sightsee. I walked her off after that. It's been a while since she has done something like that.
    ★ Jumpers - It was a rough one with Dolphin. He went right past the weaves, missed a jump, the whole run was fairly slow and deliberate. Yuck. Noodle was not feeling good by the afternoon, and her jumpers showed it - she went around a jump, avoided the tunnel, but finished OK. Kind of a bummer day overall.

FRIDAY:
    ★ FAST - The send was jump-jump-wrap back to jump. It was RIGHT in line with the start jump, forcing you to do it right away, and the line was a full 20 feet away. Needless to say almost no one at the trial got this one, and neither of my dogs did. I used this opportunity to work the weaves with Dolphin and he ate them up! I threw him a big party afterwards and he was so happy.
    ★ Jumpers - Noodle had a nice, decent qualifying run in jumpers. The start was hard - a jump and 180 degree wrap to the weaves right at the beginning...YUCK. Amazingly, Dolphin actually got it! He got the wrong end of the tunnel and I didn't correct it, we went on and finished strong...great run for him.
    ★ Standard - Noodle was great in standard...I did some terrible blind crosses in all the wrong places and she was such a good girl and dealt with it. I love that! Double QQ for the Noodlehead! Dolphin was running great until he weirdly ran a full circle around the table before getting on, incurring a refusal. Kind of ironic since this is the LAST weekend for the table as AKC has taken the table out of allowable obstacles as of July 1st. He was running great, slipped and missed his weave entrance. I did a fix N go and did the jump where he slipped, he stayed on his feet and nailed some beautiful weaves, so that was nice!

SATURDAY:
    ★ FAST - The send was icky - tunnel, back in to same end of tunnel, then jump. Even though Dolphin stopped midway to check out something he noticed over the fence, both dogs got the Q!
    ★ Jumpers - It was a tunnel start which was really slow for my two tunnel-hating dogs, but both dogs ran awesome and qualified!
    ★ Standard - Noodle laid down a beautiful standard Q, definitely her best run of the weekend. Dolphin ran GREAT, nailed everything, but knocked a bar...he was one knocked bar away from a triple QQQ. However, Noodle did get a Triple QQQ today! The trial ended on a great note for me, so the drive home was all smiles :-)