Derby City Agility Trial -- Page

This was Page's third agility trial, and her first 3-day trial. No surprise: Page held up well over the three days; better than I did!!

FAST classes

I ran Page in FAST just for the experience of getting on the equipment. She had two wonderful runs. Again, I'm a "get in, get the points, and get out" kind of game player, so Page Q'd her FAST run on Saturday but was not in the placement ribbons. Since my goal was really just to get her on equipment and work contacts, I didn't care about the extra ribbon!

Page hit all her contacts, which was nice. We had the same fly by of the teeter that we did in Evansville with a small stress sniff. This was also the first run she ever missed a weave entrance! Shocking!

Sunday's FAST run threw a new and strange teeter performance into the mix. It's taken me a few days, but I've finally figured out what happened. She did the fly by of the teeter, but then she tried to figure out how to get on. Since I taught her a lot of board work as a pup, it was natural for her to hop on the middle. So she did and went down. Well, since she did 4 paws on, I had to do another jump and then try again. Same result. Then we ran out of time. No Q on this one, but I was more thrown by the teeter "performance."

JWW Classes

Saturday's JWW course was really nice, and we should have Q'd on it. However, I didn't anticipate a slight pull from jump 3 to jump4. As soon as I realized she was around jump 4, I knew she'd be in the tunnel too fast for me to react. The Q was blown, but I could still work the FMFC off the jump out of the tunnel. This was such a pretty run, that I'm still proud of it.

Sunday's JWW run was one I'll remember for a long, long time. It was flawless. Page did a send and I front crossed on the landing side of a pinwheel. She did three rear crosses that were lovely. And it was the first time she broke 5 YPS in a qualifying run. I've NEVER had a dog who ran that fast. This was a nice 118-yard course, and Page ran it in 22.20 seconds. That's 5.3 YPS, and I was thrilled. I could watch this one over and over. When we're on, it's so magical!

Our last JWW run of the weekend was on a really tough course. There were about four side changes, and that ate us up. Poor Page went around about 3 jumps that I didn't support well, because I was focused on where to go next. We still managed to get through it, even though we didn't Q.

Standard Classes

Poor Page. On Saturday by the time we got to Standard 11 hours after we arrived that morning, I was mentally done. I was no where near where I should have been for her. I left myself stuck behind on contacts and didn't support the contact entry well enough. We had two off courses, and I rotated my shoulders and pulled her around another jump. We certainly gave the judge lots of exercise on this run! At least the weave poles were nice!

Although our Standard run was much earlier in the day on Sunday, I was very tired. My hips were starting to hurt, and I was completely perplexed by Page's new teeter performance. Poor Judge Kurt! She hopped up and over and I just took it as a refusal and went back. Then when she hopped up and over the second time, I asked (you can't hear it on the tape) if I should go on because of the 4 paw rule. His response was "Ahhh...." He couldn't tell either! Page solved that problem by promptly putting all four paws on and coming off, so he laughed and said, "Yes, now go on!"

Obviously the front cross to the dogwalk was very late, as Page and I collided (and not very prettily)! I'm sure I heard her say, "GET OUT of my way mother!" as her head collided with my rear end! Poor Page. She works her guts out and I didn't make it easy!

The last Standard run of the weekend, and I felt like this was the best handled one. Yeah, we had the same teeter issue that NQ'd her, but that's ok. We worked well together as a team. I didn't anticipate the off course tunnel, but I worked the rest of it well with a pretty rear cross out of the chute. It was a nice run.

Overall, I thought Page did an outstanding job at this trial. She had 10 runs over the weekend, and while our Q rate wasn't perfect, we became a better team. I'm looking forward to the next trial!