Under the Big Black Sun

Another hot weekend of agility, this time down in Pueblo which is a 2 1/4 hour drive to the south so it gets even hotter down there than in the Denver/Boulder area. Last year it went up to the 100's and Cody looked so miserable after the 4th obstacle of his standard run that I left the ring so I guess I should have been happy it only went up to the mid 80's. Cody had a great day on Saturday, picking up Q's in 3/4 of his classes. He had a beautiful Gamblers run, taking 2nd place and an even better run in the Grand Prix picking up 3rd place and his second Q to qualify for nationals. The timer didn't go off for our Grand Prix run so the timer started the clock late manually. The judge decided to add 2 seconds to our time and I was perfectly happy with that because we were still way under time with a clean run but in the end we were fractions of a second off 2nd place and I can't help but wonder where we really came out. The first place dog was 8 seconds ahead and the 4th place dog had faults so it was close enough, just funny that we were so close. We even picked up a Q in pairs but by the skin of our teeth since Cody blew the dogwalk contact, his only blown contact of the whole trial. He got a tricky weave pole entry so I can't complain.

Sunday was another matter and we only Q'd in Snooker though he had a nice Gamblers run if only he hadn't added an extra jump to the Gamble. Both standard runs had issues with the table for both dogs. They both hate laying down on it in the hot sun and Sat. they both hopped on, hopped off, hopped on again and eventually laid down. I didn't want to take them out to reward that so we kept going but in retrospect maybe I should have. It's hard to say what they would interpret the reward was for. On Sunday Lola flat out refused to lay down and I could see her poor brain freezing up so I calmly excused ourselves and led her out of the ring. No reward for her but I didn't want to continue on with the course because I could tell she was stressed so it wouldn't have gone well anyway. I also don't want her to think she can freeze on the table like that then get to go on eventually. Cody paused a moment or so but then went quickly down so I took him out and gave him a big reward. I've signed up for a fun match in a couple of weeks so hopefully they'll have a table and we can work on this a bit.

Lola's only Q was in Snooker but she had a nice Grand Prix run, just a refusal at the weaves and a little misunderstanding that caused a run by at a jump that I didn't bother to fix. I didn't enter her in everything since she's still just coming back. I think once we get more practice in she'll get back into the swing of things.

I drove down to the trial on Friday for the first time as an experiment. I usually get up at 4 am on Sat. to drive down and spend the rest of the day tired & crabby and we don't do that well. I'm not a morning person. I didn't sleep all that well in the hotel on Friday because there were kids running up & down the stairs screaming until 10-10:30 pm (Why are my dogs better behaved in hotels than most people's kids? Don't these parents care about the other hotel guests? How can they live with that screaming all the time?) but I still felt better in the morning than I normally do after waking up so early & driving for 2 1/4 hours and I had a lot more energy during the day so I think I'll plan on doing that more often.

We did have cooler, cloudier weather on Sunday afternoon for Jumpers & Gamblers and it did make a difference in the dogs' energy & enthusiasm. I tried keeping them cool with cooler coats and hosing Cody down (Lola's scared of the hose) but there's something about that sun beating down that saps their will a bit.

Overall a very fun trial and nice diversion from some weird stuff that went down at work last week. I almost didn't go to the trial because I was so preoccupied with what was/is happening that I thought I wouldn't be able to concentrate properly on the dogs but in the end it worked out to be a good distraction. Unfortunately it's back to reality for now. I haven't had a day off since Jan. 1st and I'm really looking forward to the upcoming 3 day weekend.