In our quest for CPE legs, we headed out to Cathedral Pines Park on Long Island this past weekend. I used to go to trials at this site all the time but hadn’t been out there in a couple of years – it was good to be back. The site is one of my favorites – nice and quiet, good footing, plenty of opportunity to park in the shade. The downsides being lots of spectators (especially in the afternoon), some “unique” equipment (in good repair, but much of it dating back in style to the mid 90’s), and a commute which includes lots of tolls and the Cross Bronx Expressway (or the “Cross Bronx Expwee”, as my GPS insists on calling it).

One other drawback this year – the site was a veritable POLLEN FARM!! It was especially dry and windy Saturday and although I rarely have “allergy problems”, between the pollen the dust, and probably some smoke from campfires my contacts and eyes were bothering me soooo badly that there were times I had to run to my car, eyes tearing so badly I could barely SEE!

Bryce was pretty sniffy on Saturday and didn’t seem at all motivated early Sunday morning in jackpot, but he got it back together later Sunday to Q in standard and jumpers. He wasn’t loving their teeters – very flexible (I believe the term du-jour is “whippy”), lots of “base hop” and very noisy besides.

He was still being a little weird on the dogwalk this weekend – the more I observe him I think it’s more mental than physical and related at least in part to the slatless dw at our building, which was used in all our winter/early spring trials. He had found himself sliding down the down-ramp whenever he tried to stop on it – now he’s pausing at the TOP of the down ramp like he isn’t sure if he’s going to go sliding or not! He’s not doing it on the a-frame.

Jayda did well, getting 2 Level 4 standard legs, 1 Fullhouse and 1 Level 5 colors. One more Q in L4 Standard and she moves up to Level 5 Standard! One more Q in L4 Jumpers or L4 Fullhouse and she moves up to L5 in those classes too, just lagging behind a bit in Jackpot. I can’t believe how quickly she’s moving through Level 4!

She ran a REALLY nice jumpers course the end of Sunday – unfortunately got sucked into an offcourse tunnel. Wrong courses are rare for her and I DID signal to get her attention after the previous jump, but either my signal was weak or she had already “locked on target”. Nonetheless, I was very pleased with her speed – she was FLYING!!! Counting the off-course, there were 5 tunnels on the course – Jayda is slow in tunnels (she won’t canter through a tunnel for love or money – she trots), but she still had a very fast time on that course! I’m thinking I may try running her in the Proficient class in NADAC – it’s hard to compare the standard classes between the two organizations, but judging by that jumpers run she’s noticeably faster at 16″.

There was a very smart and observant photographer there – I say that because he thought Jayda was absolutely beautiful and took a lot of pictures of her . (Of course I think she’s beautiful but other people usually notice the more extroverted Bryce or Raven and ignore my little wallflower.) I also had him shoot some portraits of Raven (which she sat for like a real pro – big off-camera light box and all! Hmmm – a modeling career for Raven perhaps???). The photographer should have the pictures on his site by Wednesday – I’ll post the link when they’re up.

This weekend was my own club’s (Skyline Agility) NADAC trial. With the typical NADAC-style open courses and long yardage, running 2 dogs in a NADAC trial is exhausting enough, running AND working doubly so! I’m blogging about it now because frankly I’m too tired to do anything else :)!

Once again, we had a mixed bag of weather. It wouldn’t be a proper Skyline trial if we didn’t have some rain, but considering some of our past “monsoons”, we lucked out.

This year we offered a “traditional” format trial with something for everyone. If you entered every class, you’d have run 4 runs of Regular, 2 Chances, 2 Jumpers and one each of Touch and Go, Hoopers, Weavers and Tunnelers (and spent a small fortune on entry fees!) I only entered about 4 classes per day per dog and that was more than enough for me!

Jayda Recap

Jayda and I did pretty well, earning 30 points in Regular, 10 in Jumpers and 10 in Chances. I was very pleased with her in Regular on Sunday. She was moving as fast as I’ve ever seen her go, and after one of her runs she actually acted HAPPY and bounced up for her treats, which earned her a bonus run to the food tent for something REALLY special :)! (You have to understand that Jayda normally just wants to go back to her crate!) We failed to Q on her 2nd jumpers run because it was the end of the day – with everyone packing up, she was just too stressed. I can’t wait to move her up to Open jumpers, which is never at the beginning or end of the day, but I’ve come this far towards her triple superior, so I might as well stick it out. She only needs 15 pts in Regular, 30 in Chances and 50 in Jumpers, so hopefully by the end of the year!

Pictures, pictures?

There are some good photos of Jayda on the trial photographer’s site, especially a nice series of jump photos that starts here and two from her Regular class that start here.

Bryce Recap

Bryce and I didn’t have our NADAC “mojo” together this weekend, only managing a 5 point Q in one regular run, 10 points in elite jumpers and 10 in hoopers with a 1st place to finish his Novice Hoopers title. Hoopers is kind of like Snooker in the sense that Bryce doesn’t LIKE it but he’s GOOD at it. (I think Jayda would do well in Hoopers, but I don’t think she’d enjoy it either.)

Bryce was being weird about the dogwalk in his regular classes, refusing it and going across much slower than usual. I don’t know if it was because the ramps were bouncy or if it was something else – the black rubber contacts? Doing only the little dogwalk all winter in CPE trials and “forgetting” the full sized dogwalk? He was fine with the a-frame. There were other dogs that didn’t like that dogwalk, but few if any of them with his considerable experience.

His elite jumpers run was his last run of the weekend – a gruelling 22 obstacle course. I could tell he was kind of tired, but he was able to keep up a decent pace throughout the course nonetheless. He was definitely feeling well all weekend.

Tunnel Relay (and links to Bryce pictures)

The photographer got a few cute pictures of Bryce in our tunnel relay event. Our tunnel relay is an annual fundraiser we do to raise money for United Hospice – a volunteer organization which cared for one of our beloved Skyline members in her final days. Most teams dress up in silly costumes to run (my team was a last-minute entry, hence the cheesy cardboard clock on my back!). It’s a lot of fun, and in the 4 years we’ve been doing it, we’ve raised over $21,000 for the organization!

During my down time, I took Raven out to play. At all our trials, whenever the practice jump (or in NADAC the practice jump, weaves and hoop) are vacant I’ve been taking Raven over to them to do little sequences and play with her “ratty”. Hopefully that will lessen the shock for her one of these days when I actually put her in the ring!

I’m home this weekend after taking Thursday and Friday to do our semi-annual AKC trial. Actually the last couple of years it was an ANNUAL AKC trial, but I wanted to finish up some titles on Bryce and Jayda so I’m going for 2 this year .

BTW, If you ever want to really disorient yourself as to what day it is, do a midweek trial!

Once again, the weather was weird, ranging from cool (50’s) to hot (upper 70’s), rainy to sunny – all in one day! It’s getting so I don’t know what to wear or what to bring anymore!

It was raining Thursday morning – not pouring rain, just an unpleasant drizzle. The grounds were soaking wet but the ring footing was good. We started out with Jumpers with Weaves – Jayda had just moved up to Open, Bryce needed one Q to complete the NJP he started 2 years ago (at last year’s trial he wasn’t feeling well so he didn’t run). Jayda ran a nice course, uncharacteristically popping out of the weaves early but in Open you’re allowed 1 of those so we fixed it and kept going The rest was perfect, that was her first Open Jumpers Q :)!

I’d been jumping Bryce really low for about 6 months and wasn’t sure how he’d deal with going back 12″. No problem, he was fine and I think he actually ENJOYED jumping “real” jumps again! Q and title for Brycey! I’d only entered him in jumpers and sort of regretted it because he obviously wanted to do more both days, but like the weather I have no way to predict how he’ll be feeling when I enter these trials.

Next was Novice Standard – Jayda ran a nice course except for the table. She USED to have a really nice automatic down on the table, but I realized we haven’t done a formal table for the last 6 months! She hopped right up and sat there, looking at me blankly (getting increasingly stressed) while I tried to get her to drop into a down! I finally managed to get her to lie down and we went on to qualify, but we wasted a LOT of time on that – she Q’d and was under time (thank goodness for generous course times), but it was close. Thursday evening I made a point of reinforcing a lot of random “down’s” when we got home, which helped a little. Friday she was slow again but not as slow as the day before. She finished that course well under time to get her Novice title (NAP).

Then came the FAST class. FAST is AKC’s distance class, like Gamblers/Chances/Jackpot. Generally in these types of classes there’s some way to “launch” your dog into the distance challenge. Thursday’s course (at all levels) was an ugly beast that either left you standing flatfooted at some point in the send or had you running AWAY from the direction of the challenge, even in Novice! I wanted to make a run at it from a tunnel, but the end of the teeter was so close to my path I was afraid of running into it, so I tried to launch Jayda from the teeter. Unfortunately, that didn’t give her enough momentum to complete the challenge on the first try – she missed a jump and backjumped. She did get it a second attempt, but of course that didn’t count. Not many qualifiers in ANY level on that course. Maybe I’ll post the course map later.

Friday’s FAST was MUCH better and very do-able. Jayda got an easy Q to finish her Novice FAST (NFP) title. Bryce would have enjoyed that course – maybe if we do more AKC this year I’ll enter him in FAST.

After Jayda’s run, I noticed there’d been an error in the time – they forgot to set the timer for the extra 3 seconds she gets running in Preferred. Not a problem, as she was mid-air over the finish jump when the buzzer went off (and it wouldn’t have made a difference for the other dogs), but something to be aware of next time.

Friday ended with Jumpers. Again, Bryce ran clean and had a lot of fun. Unfortunately for Jayda, people were starting to take down their tents when I ran her – something which always spooks her. She tried, but couldn’t hold it together – oh well, that’s Jayda.

By now, Raven must be thinking that trials are someplace you hang out in the car, walk around, schmooze and play tug with your “rattie”. Is she going to be surprised one of these days when I throw her in the ring and ask her to DO something !

It was fun seeing all the people we know who do mostly or all AKC that I never see anymore! And we accomplished exactly what I set out to do – our grand total, 8 runs, 6 Q’s, 6 first places, 3 new titles. Not too shabby :),

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!