When I asked for “nice weather” for our outdoor agility trials, I meant just that – nice weather for AGILITY. Not nice weather for flying a kite, not nice weather for a day down the shore, nice weather for DOG AGILITY. You know – sunny to partly cloudy, light breeze, no rain, temps in the 50’s to low 70’s …

I only mention this because Saturday was absolutely PERFECT weather – for a day at the beach! A short burst of summer in April brought us relentless sun and temps in the mid to upper 80’s – none of the miserable humidity that we usually suffer through in summer, but nevertheless it was HOT!! Fortunately we were only trialing one day.

Here’s a certain big, black Sheltie who wasn’t all that thrilled to be climbing a-frames in the hot sun!

(But she did it anyway because she’s such a good girl !)

Bryce was entered in the 3 classes he needs – Standard, Jackpot and Wildcard. He got … Wildcard. It was just too hot for a fluffy old man with thick blood, especially one who’s not acclimated to summer temperatures yet.

He made a valiant attempt in Jackpot, but having the weaves in the joker did him in. Bryce has long-standing weave issues at outdoor trials to begin with and doing them offside and at a distance … well … he just doesn’t view the weaves as a “distance obstacle”. I tried several times to turn him and send him and each time he just looked and turned back to me in frustration like “What??? I don’t see any “turn go” obstacles out there!”

Tough break – he would have done anything else in that combo with no problem. This is the first time I’ve seen weaves in CPE jackpot and I hope it isn’t going to become a trend!

He had a wrong course in standard too, so this means we need to extend our C-ATCH quest at least one more trial . On the bright side, he’s now finished with his Wildcard requirements .

Jayda fared better, getting a 1st and Q with a beautiful clean run in Level 4 Standard (running the same course as Bryce) and qualified in Level 4 Full House and Level 5 Wildcard. She also made a good attempt at Jackpot – Jayda has no particular weave “issues”, but a softball game in the next field left her feeling a little too insecure to stay out at a distance and keep working.

After being “good” all week and spending most of Thursday at the car doctor (where they found nothing), my car was doing the weird-bad things again on the 2 1/2 hour ride there :(! But it was fine the entire way home – go figure. I’m starting to wonder if it’s something with the transmission – Whatever it is it can’t be good and it needs to be fixed before I end up stranded in the middle of nowhere with 3 dogs! It’s going back tomorrow – hopefully 3rd times the charm!