Monday, August 15, 2011

This Charming Man

Strum had a pretty good weekend on paper.  Hit all his dogwalks, 5/5, and all his teeters.  Didn't get called on any of his 6 A-frames but on the video it looks like he might have gotten a gift on one of them.  I made a compilation of his dogwalks and most of his A-frames for the running contact freaks.  SO so happy about those dogwalks, first time he's ever hit 100%.  And one of those was at a distance in a gamble!  He was such a Mr. Awesome Pants.


Running Contacts Compilation



He had 5/6 Q's on Saturday (maybe we can forget about the 0/4 Q's on Sunday) and finished up his Specialist (Masters) Jumpers and Standard titles.  He also had only 1 bar down the whole trial and thankfully it was during a run where lots of other stuff went wrong as well.  I think the footing at that trial a couple of weeks ago isn't the best for Strummer.  It's hard packed dirt and while I've trialed there before and never thought of it as being a problem I just can imagine why else he had so many bars down.  In any case I'm glad to see the issue was an anomaly. 


Saturday's Jumpers and Standard Runs



I have video for the North American Challenge and Traditional Gamblers but it's not posted to vimeo yet and it's not all that interesting though he did get a distance gamble with a dogwalk which was something of a miracle.

On the one hand I suppose I should be happy with all the Q's.  On the other hand my goal for the weekend was to have nice smooth runs that were truly clean, ie no refusals or missed weave entries, and we didn't have a single such run.  A refusal here, a missed weave entry there put us out of all the placements for the weekend.  Even our most awesome Trigility team came in 2nd by fractions of a second because I had a refusal in my Jumpers run while teammates ran clean.  Thankfully the 1st place team had my same 2 teammates so I didn't deny them their 1st place, just shifted it to their other team.

Weave entries were iffy on Saturday.  One of them looks like a handling error but the others, I don't know.  No refusals on Sunday but I was tired and came out of the nine zillionth pinwheel of the weekend on a Jumpers run and briefly forgot where to go next.  I hate getting lost, especially during Jumpers.  Then called him a fraction of a second too late and got off course tunnels in both Standard runs.  Mr. McSpeedypants needs to hear his name before he takes off for the jump before the turn.  I had just practiced this on Friday too.  I was tired by Sunday, I didn't finish Saturday's runs until 6 pm and even Strum was tired for once when we got home.  Sunday I left after 4 runs at around 11:30 a.m. and it was a good decision.  Sitting around for 4 hours in the heat for 1 run is not my cup of tea.

Sunday's runs



I know, deliver me from Pinwheel Hell.

Anyway, I was so hoping to have nice smooth runs before Champs. in Sept.  The courses were so easy if not repetitive and tedious.  SO many pinwheels this time.  We can do pinwheels no problem but they're oh so boring.  Especially by the 6th run.  I'm hoping we'll see some more challenging courses at Champs.  And hopefully not so many pinwheels.

I'm starting to wonder if the announcement of an Arizona Champs next year will also effect this year's entry in Grand Junction.  Maybe the AZ folks won't bother to come up this year because they know it'll be in their backyard next year and they'll wait and go to that.  I guess we'll find out in Sept.  I know, I should be bitching to the folks at DOCNA not to you folks but I think they're busy w/ Champs. stuff for this year right now and it seems easier to pick a different agility goal for next year than to kick up a fuss.  There's always something to do on any given weekend.


Final Stats

Specialist Traditional Gamblers Q-6th place (re-did the weave poles due to pop-outs 3 times so lost a lot of points)

Specialist Standard Round 1 Q-4th place (missed weave entry and a spin on a poorly managed rear cross)

Specialist Standard Round 2 Q-5th place (missed weave entry and run by at last jump when I let up at the finish)

Specialist Trigility Q-2nd place (We had a refusal in Jumpers, partners ran clean)

Specialist Jumpers Round 1 Q-4th place (lost time due to a refusal)


Completed Specialist Jumpers Title

Completed Specialist Standard Title


Dogwalks
 5/5 (100% baby!!!)

A-frames
6/6 (100%)  Technically perfect but I think we got a gift on one of them.  All the others looked great though.

Teeters
100% , very happy w/ his teeters

Correct weave pole entries
6/9 (67%)  Three of these were with the weave poles as the first obstacle

Weave pole pop-outs
3/9 (33%)  Popped out on 3 runs

Bars down
Only 1 bar down out of 10 runs, pretty fantastic

3 comments:

  1. Wow, nice stats on the contacts! And on the titles, too; always nice to get each one behind you.

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  2. Congratulations on the beautiful dogwalks! That must feel so good after all the hard work you've put in to them.

    Hope the filming was ok. I finally figured out how to work the zoom on Sunday.

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  3. The filming was great, thanks so much for doing it! And you did tape the NAC, I just didn't post it because there were so many runs and that one had so many mistakes and was tedious for people to watch. I'm so glad too because it turned out he had got his dogwalk and I thought he had missed.

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