Had a USDAA trial this weekend and I'm very very tired. Had my last run on Sat. at 7:00 pm and I was pretty tired & crabby but we Q'ed in Snooker so I guess it was worth waiting around though had I known it would be so late I would have left after my standard run finished at 3:30. Sunday was much better (done by just after 3:00) but I really wish I had the day off tomorrow. From now on I think I'm only going to enter 4 runs per day, 5 is too much for both me and Cody.
It was fun though and Cody did pretty well for Cody, picking up his (and my) first ever Standard Q in masters as well as Q's in Snooker, Gamblers and the Grand Prix. We had 2nd places in Standard & Gamblers, the rest I don't remember. I think the only off courses we had all weekend were the very last jump of Speed Jumping (argh!) and Jumpers. He had some crazy, lack of focus moments in particular in our first Gamblers run which should have been easy peasy but he ran a little wild and ended up at the opposite end of the arena when the whistle blew. He did the gamble but was .17 sec over time. Same thing happened the last time this judge was in town. That's 2 easy gamble Q's lost because we were out of position. Oh well, I'm sure we'll get the remaining 2 we need for his championship long before we'll get those remaining standard runs.
Most of the mistakes we had this weekend were with the weaves, either popping out or missing an entry. Unfortunately it's the one obstacle I don't like to drill because of his shoulder. On the good side he didn't miss a single contact all weekend, even on the gamble which had an A-frame. Best of all was that he wasn't the slightest bit stressed at all-no start line stress, perfect downs on the table, no flying off the contacts, yay. Our NQ's were all little mistakes, no major meltdowns. Our last trial was exactly 3 months ago so I wasn't holding out much hope we'd do well, esp. considering how I'd been running in classes and at practice lately so I was pretty pleased with Mr. Baloneypants. I'm finally starting to feel a bit more confident with those masters classes too.
I missed having Lola there, she would have liked some of those courses. She's entered in some trials next month though so we'll see how she does. Jonny came up to watch for a bit and brought Strummer who is doing much better but is still a bit too unhinged by the dogs running in the ring. At least I was able to get him to focus on me fairly easily but it would be nice if he didn't lose control in the first place. Oh well, baby steps.
I'm not so sure it's the runs that are exhausting as all of the action and activity that goes on between runs, especially on a very long day like your Saturday was. I think if one had five runs within, say, a 2-hour span, and then went home, one would be just fine. It's just being on one's feet for hours on end and out in the sun (or wind, or rain) and interacting with people and concentrating on jobs you might be working and pottying the dogs and yourself, and and and ...
ReplyDeleteSo I've entered only 3 days of this coming weekend's 4-dayer because, like you, I'm wiped out after just a 2-day. Between my 2 dogs, that'll be 14 runs Thurs, 10 Fri, 10 Saturday. At least some of the walkthroughs will be the same or similar for both dogs. --I'm exhausting myself just thinking about the weekend! :-)
Congrats on doing so well after such a long lay-off, although I think that the break actually does good things for dogs' and handlers' psychological readiness.
-ellen
I agree with Ellen--I'm just as exhausted running one dog as I am running two, simply because I rarely sit down and rest at trials.
ReplyDeleteI just did three days of agility (one day of ASCA, two of NADAC), and I noticed on Sunday that I wasn't really on the ball--I was making all kinds of sloppy mistakes that cost me Qs. But Lucy was mostly doing exactly what I asked of her (which was occasionally the wrong thing!), so I still consider the whole thing a success.
Yeah, you're right, it is because the runs were so spread out. I've done 12 runs per day w/ both dogs in the same classes in NADAC and been done by 2-3:00 and it's not nearly such a big deal. I don't think the club anticipated such a large entry (the starters class was huge) or perhaps they wouldn't have offered double gamblers, Steeplechase and Grand Prix which is what caused such a long day on Sat. I certainly had no idea the entry would be so big, I've never been at a trial that late. There was a terrible issue with dust in the arena on Sat. (rings were wetted down nicely on Sun.) and I spent most of my spare time working so that contributed to the fatigue factor. I'd still rather have had one less run and gone home at 3:30-4:00. I should have just forfeited my entry, I've done that before in NADAC when things are running late, but I love Snooker and wasn't thinking clearly enough to realize how late things were likely to run.
ReplyDeleteCongratulations on all your Q's, as you said, it's Masters (and it's not supposed to be easy :-)
ReplyDeleteIt took me a long time to figure out how may classes and how many days of trialing I could do and still be able to concentrate in the last class. And now that I'm running two dogs in different levels there's that added stress of having conflicts, too.
But I work hard at having fun and keeping things in perspective nowadays so I'm not nearly as fried at the end of a weekend as I used to be.