Saturday, April 30, 2011

April AKC Trial 3

I did a one-day trial today with Philip because it was offering FAST, and we just needed one more Excellent A leg in that.

However, the stars (or rather Philip's brain) were not on my side...

To start off, we had a Standard run, in which Philip went absolutely insane. He ran happily in circles, taking several wrong turns, zooming off the contacts, jumping off the table early, messing up the weaves entry, and generally being an idiot. At least he was a happy idiot, and had a blast paying zero attention to me. Goodness, I haven't seen him this crazy in several months now, I really really need this behavior not to continue, I don't know what's gotten into him!

Next up was Jumpers, and thankfully Philip had gotten all his craziness out of him by the time it started, so he paid attention and ran well on this course. Unfortunately, he somehow managed to knock two bars though :( Another thing we haven't really seen in a while. Why are all these immaturities making a comeback all of a sudden?

Last but not least was the whole reason for going to this trial - the FAST run. The send bonus today consisted of a jump, going straight to the A-frame, and straight into a tunnel (C-shaped with either side being okay to enter!). Sounds easy enough, but there was also a jump right on the handler line where the dogs were supposed to go to the tunnel. Of course, when a dog sees the handler over to the right, and a jump nearby, the dog will think that the jump is the correct obstacle, so this made the send bonus tricky. So much so that I even considered not waiting for the run when I saw the map, but I stuck it out in the end. Everything went as expected - Philip went over the jump and onto the A-frame with ease, and then turned towards the wrong jump instead of the tunnel. I stood to the side pointing to the tunnel, and he stopped and eventually turned back into the tunnel without taking the jump. However, the judge had already called a refusal and faulted our bonus :( It was good progress, but still an NQ.

So, as you can probably tell, it was a useless and frustrating day for us. I'm kinda glad I'm not signed up for Sunday, as it would have probably ended in a similar manner. Oh well, till next time...

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