March AKC Trial 3

We had a yet another trial this past weekend. I think this is the first time that we've gone to 3 trials in a single month - Philip is on a roll :)

Saturday wasn't his day... On Jumpers, he took a wrong course, also causing a bar to fall down as I was trying to get his attention. On Standard, he was all over the place - missing a Dog Walk contact (bad dog!), jumping off of the Table too soon, and skipping the last pole on the Weaves. So two NQs for us on Saturday.

Sunday was a bit misty and cold in the morning, so I wasn't sure how we'd do, but the courses were very nice, which was gratifying for a change. When Philip started off on Jumpers, he nicked the very first bar, which I heard, but couldn't see if it fell or not. As the course went on, there was a point where we were running kind of back towards the beginning. So I decided there would be no harm in sneaking a peek to see if the first bar stayed up. So I looked and saw that it was fine, but meanwhile Philip took a wrong turn because I wasn't watching him! Ugh, I'm so mad at myself. My instructor always says how you should never look back at a bar - there isn't anything you can do about it anyway, so keep focused, you'll find out later if it stayed up. Of course, it's very difficult not to look, and it bit me in the butt this time. Philip ran the rest of the course beautifully, and would have qualified had I not made that mistake.

I was bummed out and not looking forward to Standard, thinking Philip will probably mess up the table or take the wrong turn as usual. However, when the time came to run, Philip was paying attention and I got back in the proper mindset. He did the Table okay, and I really stressed the Dog Walk with him, telling him to wait a good 5 times, so he slowed down and got the contact. Lastly, he did the Weaves well, and finished the course clean! So we got a Q for this run :) Philip took 7th place again (he really likes being 7th I think), and got a whole 18 MACH points - good boy!

Too bad I was an idiot on Jumpers, otherwise we would have gotten our first double Q - oh well, maybe that bad run is what caused us to run better in Standard. Good weekend anyway :)