Whoop Whoop!

Hey there everyone!!! Checking in with any of you who actually read this blog. Monster and I had an agility trial last weekend and we have a few brags and a few interesting tidbits. 

The weekend began fast and connected. The weather was cool (this trial is outdoors on grass) and we were in our zone. We remained in our zone virtually the whole weekend. I forgot where we were going on course 3 times! My poor pup. I was really disappointed in myself for forgetting since we were flowing so well together. We had a real shot and kicking some butt!

Saturday we earned our Advanced Snooker title on a long and arduous snooker course by Dave Bozak. No one made time in his Masters snooker course but there were still SuperQ's to be had. Monster and I were 1 of 2 dogs in the entire advanced snooker class to Q! 

Snooker!

Saturday Gamblers

Sunday we earned our Advanced Gamblers title on a gamble that I didn't expect to be difficult for my guy. We nailed it! The opening was a bit wobbly though. My plan was to start with the start jump and then move to the teeter and then dogwalk-tunnel-dogwalk which would have given the minimum opening points and then we could grab and go for the rest. Monster didn't hit the yellow on the dogwalk and I was shocked and starting calculating in my head FAST! Contacts were 5pts in the class so I quickly sent him to the teeter and managed to squeeze in 2 jumps before the buzzer. The gamble was a very diagonal jump to a tunnel that was wrapped through the aframe (obstacle discrimination!) and then coming in to a final jump. I wish I had the course map available but the last jump was angled so that a dog needed to be cued before coming out of the tunnel OR you needed to "push" them a little bit back on their path. I will post video of the runs that were video"worthy" at the bottom of this post and gamblers from Sunday will be in there. 

Sunday's Gamble!

Holding our teeter after the naughty stay break in Standard

The disappointing part of Sunday was when Monster BROKE HIS START-LINE STAY and took an off course on the tire versus turning to the weaves. I know exactly why the off course occurred but I have a theory about the stay issue. The off course occurred because the lead out was going to be my tool to cue Monster that a turn was coming up. I just couldn't get where I needed to go once he broke. The theory about his stay breaking was that I noticed Monster's excitment levels increasing over the weekend. More barking prior to a run (I allowed the barking because he was running focused and in sync with me) and he even nipped at my clothes to hurry up a few times. Also, he did that squealing thing in the weave poles in pairs. LOTS of off courses in pairs lol- just during our run. That was my fault as I was acting a bit rushed to make a decent time. Had we gotten a Q in pairs and Standard on Sunday then we would have gotten his Advanced Agility title to move up to Masters in EVERYTHING. No video fo pairs or that standard run available.

I used my new Excel spreadsheet for our runs to track and confirm titles and Q's. I didn't look ahead to see if it would be a title run but I checked in afterward to find out after each qualifying run. The spreadsheet was made by an agility competitor and it's smart so it fills in applicable Q's under LAA and such. Check it out in the link below!

Link to Excel Spreadsheet for USDAA as well as some other helpful info!

















Video is below!