March AKC Trial 2

We went to another trial this weekend (told you there are lots coming up!). We had a good weekend, and I'll try to make this short :)

Saturday Jumpers had a really tough weave entry, and unfortunately Philip missed it, getting to the second pole instead of the first. Otherwise his run was really nice, Philip paid attention, and made no other mistakes.

Saturday Standard had a few tricky turns, so it took a lot of screaming on my part to get Philip to go the right way. However, the screaming actually worked this time! One time he got super close to the off-course Teeter, but I managed to get him off just as he almost stepped on it :) He also got his weaves spot-on even though I wasn't next to him - good boy! He got a Q and took 1st place out of the Excellent A dogs in this course, and this was our 3rd and last Excellent A Standard Q!!! Woohoo, after 10 painful months (he finished Open Standard last May!), we are finally moving on to Excellent B Standard!

No FAST this weekend, so I waited for little dogs to finish, put in the move-up request, and headed home. Sunday morning started way too early due to the time change. As a matter of fact, Philip was still asleep when I got up - not a usual sight at all, he usually waits eagerly for me! Also, being so early, the grass was all wet from the morning dew at the site, soaking my shoes completely - that wasn't so pleasant, yuck...

Sunday Jumpers had another tricky weave entry, and again Philip messed up and took the second pole :( Looking back, it was totally my fault for not correcting his approach, but since he was one of the first dogs on the line, I didn't get to realize this till after our run. The rest of the run was really nice, I even had several people comment to me how well Philip ran :) He paid perfect attention, I didn't have to scream at him at all, and I got all my front crosses in as I wanted!

Sunday Standard wasn't bad at all, and I even had high hopes for it, but unfortunately Philip knocked one bar down :( I'm really not sure what happened there, as he doesn't knock bars much at all anymore, but the rest of the course was clean, so it gives me good hope that Philip might finally be getting better at paying attention to me. I'm starting to believe that getting out of the "terrible twos" really did wonders for him now that he is 3 years old!

So all in all, just one Q for us this weekend, but a very desired Q, and only 1 mistake each in the other runs, so I'm very happy with the results. Now that Philip is finally in Excellent B for both courses, we can start shooting for doubles, and we'll have more opportunities for points - yay!