It was great getting to sleep in a bit on Thursday and then driving down to Lake St. Louis for an evening agility trial - Excellent Only - felt kinda weird. A very nice facility, this trial was held at the National Equestrian Center on packed dirt.
We had Standard first, judged by Laura English. It looked like a fun course and when I got Ruby to the line she was INSANE, pulling me and barking to get into the ring. She barely held her start line and was off like a red bullet. She did hold her DW contact however ~ what a good girl! She ended up winning the 24" class easily, over a second faster than the 2nd place dog and earning 42 MACH points! She ran it at 4.23 YPS! I'm so proud of this run and when Tammy puts it up on youtube for me, I'll provide a link.
Jumpers was next, a really nice course from Lavonda Herring, and again Ruby almost broke her start line. We had a gorgeous run going but I called her too early for a turn and pulled her off a jump. Once again I blow a QQ! Oh well, even with me having to turn her and resend her over the jump she ran it well under SCT at 5.27 YPS.
Friday was an interesting day. Excellent ran last so the dogs all sat in their crates for an hour and a half before they got to do anything. We had a perfect, fast run going...only the dogwalk, tunnel, weaves and a jump sequence left to go. It was pretty much in the bag. As Ruby came down the DW she slowed down and I thought to myself, WOW! I'm going to have two beautiful DW's this weekend! But as she slowed down to the yellow, she stopped and peed on the end. I had turned to do a front cross and started to release her when the judge said "Hold on." I said, "Oh crap! She's peeing!" and picked her up. Lavonda called for the clean up crew and I stood there holding Ruby and talking to the judge. I apologized to her and she said that it was no big deal, they're dogs and she thought Ruby just got excited and just couldn't hold it. Anyway I was mortified and Lavonda just told me some funny stories about what her dogs have done to her and I carried her out of the ring after apologizing again.
Oddly enough this isn't the first time Ruby has done this. Those of you that know her or have been in class with her know that she's done this on Dana's dogwalk a number of times. I don't know why she chooses this spot to go when she has to go or why she does it. And yes, the times that she's done it I have pottied her before class so I have no idea why she suddenly gets the urge to go when she's on the dogwalk. It's not like she's gulping down water in between runs and before this run at the trial she wouldn't even drink any water. Very strange.
Needless to say neither one of us were mentally there for Jumpers. It wasn't a great course to begin with and I cued her too early for a turn after a jump which she ended up missing. It caused her to slow down quite a bit and her weaves were methodical. The middle part of the course we did well and then she took an off-course near the end I didn't anticipate at all. At that point it didn't really matter and we headed out to Kewanee soon after. The photographer did get some great shots of her during her Standard run though. I'll post on Kewanee soon as Saturday posed some very interesting problems for us.
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1 comment:
Don't worry she'll get better. She is fast and has a great jump! Great dog.
Cheers for Ruby!!!!!
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