Had a pretty fun weekend at the NADAC agility trial this past weekend. Bryce was entered in chances (2x) and tunnelers (1x – just for his amusement). He had a good time, but didn’t Q in anything, so the weekend ended up being all about the girls!

The trial was in a site used for horse events and all things considering, the footing and conditions in the rings themselves were excellent. However the rest of the grounds were another story! It had rained hard on Friday and was drizzling on and off all day Saturday, resulting in lots of MUD! Nasty, sneaker-sucking, clay-ey mud. You could take long detours around it or gingerly step through the “drier” areas, but there were some wickedly slippery spots and doing this little mud dance all day long was kind of hard on the legs!

Jayda

We had originally just entered Saturday. Jayda started with a really great run in Jumpers to earn her Outstanding Novice Jumpers title, following it up later in the day with 2 clean runs in Regular to finish her Superior Novice Regular title – Yay!

For those of you who don’t do NADAC, an Outstanding is awarded in Novice or Open when you reach 100 points (10 Q’s) in Regular or 60 points (6 Q’s) in any other class. A superior is 200 points (20 Q’s) in Regular and 100 points (10 Q’s) in the other classes. (The point totals are higher for Elite). We’re going for Jayda’s Novice Triple Superior award, which you get for earning superior titles in Regular, Jumpers and Chances.

Here’s a little bit of video from her 2nd regular run. Not a very exciting clip (one of her slower runs of the weekend) and there were some “technical difficulties” so this is all I have, but Raven’s been such a blog-hog lately I felt I had to post it!

Raven ran later in the day – more on her later :).

I wasn’t entered on Sunday, but it turned out to be a beautiful day and since I’d also accidently left my chair there on Saturday and the secretary allows day-of-trial entries, I headed back up for a few more runs (and to get my chair!). I entered Jayda in Regular and Chances, Bryce in Chances and Raven in Jumpers.

Jayda moved up to Open for Regular – she had a great run, but took a wrong obstacle on a discrimination. She Q’d in Chances, bringing her Chances point total to 80.

I’m definitely seeing progress in her speed! She was a good 10″ under time on that Open course and would have even Q’d in Elite (the course was the same for both). She also had a new “personal best” speed in Jumpers the day before. Now we’re talking Jayda, so it wasn’t some record shattering number :), and there was a lot of variance in her speed over the weekend (see above), but it was a big step in the right direction. I was VERY pleased with my little “slowpoke” on those runs!

Raven

Saturday I’d entered Raven in Tunnelers and Weavers. She’s still just a babydog and has virtually NO experience running full courses outside, so this was basically “practice” in a training-friendly venue. I was probably out of my mind for entering such a green dog in weavers, but she made a credible attempt. Tunnelers was a wild ride with a big wrong course in the beginning, but moments of brilliance on the 2nd half – she was a little rocket, enjoyed herself and did nice distance work besides! Unfortunately, all I have on tape is our less-impressive Weavers run:

She didn’t know what the hoops were but seemed to catch on quickly. It’s interesting that in both Weavers and Tunnelers she popped out of that last straight, dark tunnel. Not sure why she did that either – was pretty sure she’d committed to it both times. Unlike the tunnel in the middle of the run – she was already frustrated from the poles before it so I just let it go. She did a nice set of poles after it, with no help at all from me. Pretty sure I messed up the other 2 by not giving her enough space! I was much too “in her face” on this run and tried to back off a little on the others. With a grass-green dog you never know what to expect and we really don’t have our act together yet, but we had fun!

Sunday I decided to run her in Jumpers. She qualified and there were some good parts, but there was also a lot of jumping up at me, which wasted time and was driving me nuts! (She did it in Weavers too.) Take a look:

She would have smoked that course if she hadn’t spent so much time bouncing vertically! Anyone want to venture a theory why she’s doing that? Is it because she:

• Is frustrated with something I’m doing? (Poor/slow communication? On top of her too much?)
• Is used to a denser reinforcement schedule and at a certain point decides it’s time self-reinforce by engaging me in a game? She gets through a few obstacles OK and then it starts …
• Too much “handler focus”?
• Gets over-excited?
• Is feeling insecure? (Her tail’s up the whole time – she doesn’t LOOK worried about anything …)
• Is just being a silly baby?
• All of the above, none of the above, something else?

I see I’m turning in towards the jump when she does it, but I’m certain that’s my reaction to what I see HER doing (i.e. starting to run into my path) – I may not be the world’s most elegant handler, but KNOW I’m not in the habit of turning sideways to direct my dogs to jump!

Speaking of which, I AM trying to get in the habit of taking more videos of my runs, which should help me clean up some of my klutzy handling :)!