USDAA Nationals 2006 Day 2

Highlight for today-Cody had a beautiful clean run in the Grand Prix Quarterfinals earning him 4th place and a spot in the Semifinals. Looking at the video it looks like we got a gimme on his dogwalk contact and he had a wide turn at a place where he got lured by a trap but an otherwise great run. He was focused on me and having a great time. The judge for the course, Scott Chamberlain, was the judge at Cody's first trial so it felt fitting that he had such an awesome run under him at Nationals. And he's a great judge too.

Team Snooker went o.k. for both dogs. Cody had a nice run and made it up to 6 in the closing but knocked a bar on the 6 point jump combo in the opening so we lost a chunk of points there. Lola made it through the closing to 3 and took an off course trap at 4.

Probably the less said about Speed Jumping the better. Cody got an off course at around the 9th obstacle and poor Lola was having stress issues, stopping to sniff after the first obstacle or so. She turned around and started sniffing when I released her off the start line in Snooker too though she was fine once I got her going. She's not severely stressed out, just a bit and hopefully tomorrow will go a little better. She seemed fine yesterday too, go figure. Anyway, I led her off course in Speed Jumping since I was a bit rattled by her being stressed and I'm probably going senile as well. I could blame it on having to remember 3 courses at once but to be honest I simply got a bit confused and took the wrong jump. The judge was terrible, blowing his whistle about 6 times, in essence saying get the hell out of my ring right now. That's one of the only things I hate about USDAA, esp. at the Masters level, if you get an off course the judge can whistle you right off the course if they want. Sheesh, I drove all this way, spent $20 or so for each of those runs, at least let me finish.

I have video of Cody's Grand Prix run but I'm not having much luck uploading it at the moment and I must get off to bed, I'll try to get it posted tomorrow.