Palm Bay Agility Club trial

Okay, got caught up on "old" trials, so here's the report from this weekend.   We were in Vero Beach for 2 days, two warm days!  Glad to say that Lonya will work well in the heat.  No videos, I don't know a lot of people well in Vero and those that I do have dogs in Lonya's class.

Standard yesterday was okay.  It was a really nice course, very doable.  She missed a weave pole and ran around a jump.  But, she did all her contacts and the table.  I made sure to tell her to do them, not mean...but firm.  No issues (either day).  JWW was a very tricky course.  I watched the big dogs run (before us) and dog after dog crashed and burned on it.  She missed a cross and ran around a jump, and missed a pole again.  But, she did have to really work to take some jumps that I didn't position her correctly for, which is nice to see.  Some of them it definitely would have been easier for her to just run around.

Standard today was okay (seems to be our norm for now!).  Again, she did her contacts and she got her weaves.  Some squirrelyness in between.  JWW was fantastic!  She didn't Q, but it was one of those runs where the Q didn't really matter.  She was on and really ran well.  She dropped a bar when I rear crossed and said her name to make sure she turned.  My fault!  So, I tried a trickier approach to the weaves, which she did great!  And she had a couple of really nice rear crosses later in the course (we worked on them in class this week).  Her  time was 9 seconds under course time, even with one really wide turn.

Lonya loves Jumpers right now.  She definitely seems to love her "job".  She's handling the stress better, though I do still carry her in to the ring most times, and always carry her out.  It's part of our ritual now, and I like it (and she seems to also!)

I do think that some of her weave issues are caused by my poles at home.  I have 22" spacing and most everywhere has 24" spacing in their trials.  She is in the high 90% range on hitting her entries, but will skip a pole at about 7-8, which I think is when the difference in spacing catches up with her.  A friend has a welder friend who makes 24" bases (and channels to boot!) at a great price, so that's where some of my tax refund is going.  Not sure if my theory is right, but I may as well train how we trial!