Too Hot To Handle

Unfortunately the weather forecasters were right for once and we were treated to some terrible heat over the weekend for the 3 day USDAA trial. 95 degrees on Sat., 98 and Sun. and 99 today, phew. Thankfully today went quickly and I was done with my 4 classes by 12:30. I was so happy I hadn't entered Jumpers, I was so tired, hot and loopy after 3 days of such intense heat. Thankfully Jonny had come down to watch today and helped me tear down & load up. Can't even begin to say how grateful I was for that.

The good news is that both dogs' teams qualified in the Team event, Cody got his first masters standard Q with a first place, and he got his first Speed Jumping Q taking 3rd place in the finals the following day. O.k., there were only 3 dogs but we still q'ed and got $7 and a pretty ribbon which is better than no $7 and no pretty ribbon. The heat was beating down during Speed Jumping and Cody was slower than normal but still working pretty well so I was happy. I didn't have enough time to walk the course because I was running in the other ring so I was confused for a moment a couple of places on course during the run and caused a wide turn or two. Both dogs picked up Snooker Q's but no Super Q's, we missed by one point which was stupid because I had a full 10 extra seconds for both dogs, I easily could have added an extra 4 points and picked up SQ's for both of them.

The other good news is that the dogs ran great despite the heat. They were slower than normal but that was fine with me, I didn't want them pushing in such extreme weather. Nobody shut down or had any stress issues, both dogs had beautiful tables (we've been working on that) which is a good sign that they're enjoying themselves and not stressed. No major meltdown runs either, all the E's were just little things. In particular Lola was sucking to the A-frame no matter what I did and this caused 3-4 E's so we'll need to work on that. Weaves were pretty good, Cody didn't pop out at all and Lola was more consistent as well. We had another quick practice before the trial, I suppose that helped.

Best spectator moment-a woman fell at #6 in her Snooker closing and her big floppy hat fell off her head. She got up to continue her run and her big black lab picked up the hat in his mouth and finished the course which included a tunnel, the weave poles and the teeter. Very cute.

I had a bit of drama Sat. night as Lola seemed to have gotten something in her eye. It started running mid-morning and she was squinting by the end of the day. Her Team Jumpers run was really off, she was ticking bars and missed the weave poles entirely, probably because she couldn't see me. So I took her to the Emergency Vet and they stained the eye and checked for corneal abrasions, used a Q-tip to clean out all around the eye and put some antibiotics into it but they couldn't find anything. Sun. morning she was still squinty and I almost left her home but decided to take her with to see if she would improve. As it turned out she was perfectly fine all day and the squinting disappeared. No problems at all today either so hopefully it was nothing.

I went to masters tonight even though I was still tired & woozy from this morning but I thought a nice cool swim would feel so good and it did. I got out after 45 minutes and started to get a row from the coach until I told her were I'd been for 3 days and even she understood and told me she wouldn't put me on the sinners list.

Now my big question is, do I go to Nationals? I said I probably would if both dogs qualified in Team but I think I wasn't thinking that was going to happen. Lola has no Grand Prix Q's because she missed so many trials because of her injury. There's only one more local trial, if I want to try to qualify I can go to Utah in August and/or Nebraska in Sept. but I'm not sure I want to do that. Cody is qualified in Grand Prix and has the one Speed Jumping Q. We'll try for that at the local trial. I'm not sure all that travelling is worth it to add only 2-3 events and we could travel and still not Q. Decisions, decisions.