The Cessnock Wrap Up – Stepping Up

We had our 1st weekend away agility trial. Lots of fun.

As usual I was slightly nervous as mum starts packing her stuff into bags. I relax a bit when my stuff seems to be collected and moved towards the front door. Mum kept saying something about ‘pointless going to an agility trial without you’. Guess that means I was going too.

So an early start as we drove up Sat morning but I was comfy on my toddler lounge on the back seat (harnessed in of course). Hope toddler didn’t mind me borrowing.

We got to location to discover my Strat Pairs partner for the following day had cut her paw during the week and then aggravated playing the night before with our friends. The emergency crew minions tried to patch it up (helpful having a vet nurse in our group) but unfortunately she was out of action for the weekend. Thankfully another friend stepped in but that’s another story.

So we had a total of 7 runs across 2 days. Much to mum’s delight I was incredibly consistent with my starts… Yep 6 out of 7 runs I broke my start ie. didn’t wait for mum to say ‘break’ and just took off as soon as she let go of me… Which she was smart enough to not do until the last minute. Also meant I was incredibly consist and dropped the 1st bar in 6 of 7 runs. Turns out the only run I didn’t break and drop the 1st bar was Strat Pairs… I was confused. Rather than walk into the edge of the ring and get lined up I was walked out to the centre of the ring and told to sit and stay. As my Strat Pairs partner started mum wasn’t holding me and I just sat there. Mum was SHOCKED. She is considering asking all judges to put starts in the middle of the ring. Dear Judges – please redesign all courses so the starts are in the middle. But clearly mum didn’t learn from the trial earlier this here about these start lines (here) and we have been able to put together 1st World a dog Guide to Start Line Stays – The Sequel (here).

But there were some good bits that I had fun with and mum was stoked about.

A couple of the courses gave us the opportunity to try some of the more European or One Mind Dogs (OMD) style handling. In particular there was something called a German Turn that mum was pretty pleased with. Here it is if you want to take a look.

We also did our 1st Excellent Jumping courses after gaining our Novice title the other week. Neither JDX run was a qualie but in general I stayed on course. Here is the 2nd of the 2 JDX runs we had over the weekend. It was only 2 dropped bars that meant we didn’t get a clear run.

Some friends also had some awesome runs. Here is my friend Kelly. Her mum ran 3 dogs on this Masters Jumping course (including my mate Roy whose mum has an injured knee) and qualied on all 3. Also my Bro-mance mate Ned who was the only qualie in Excellent Agility. Here is his run.

The cool thing about a weekend away trial was a sleep over with my friends.

We stayed at a cool place with a big yard to wander around and cows over on the hill.