Sunday, April 4, 2010

Deep South Agility Trial, Amite, LA - Grace earns her NAJ

It was a banner day on Saturday. Grace earned her first agility title - AKC novice jumpers, NAJ.  I have photos of Grace competing in agility in 2008. I started her before she was ready just to help with her adjustment to the environment. It has been a long road but we have a title now to show for our efforts.

Lego, Tracey's oldest beagle, has decided in the last 6 months at age 7 that he can do an entire course of agility for Tracey without doing beagle things.  He has earned several agility Qs recently.  Yesterday he earned his 3rd Q and title in Open Standard which also earned him his VCD2 title.

At the end of the day yesterday Tracey and I were both ecstatic and proud of our accomplishments.  It has been a team effort and I appreciate all the training support.  Mike came to watch yesterday and was surprised when he realized that Grace didn't yet have any agility titles.  Until yesterday Grace had agility Qs in 3 venues and no agility titles.

Unfortunately Grace knocked a bar on her Novice FAST run - a panel jump that was part of the send - NQ. On her Novice Standard run Grace bailed off the teeter and the dog walk. I need to work on these contact obstacles before the LCCOC trial next week. She also struggled with the broad jump. I mentioned to Mike that I thought I needed a different command to replace "big over" for the broad jump since that is the command I use for the spread jumps. He came up with a great idea of using "reach". We will work on "reach" this week also..

Bern ran great but was in the Q- club as John Runnels calls it. In Exec Jumpers he entered the weaves at pole 2 for a Q- but the run was beautiful and I got lots of compliments. In Exec Standard he stuck his head in a dark blue tunnel and then popped back out to make sure it was correct - I was breathing and not giving him verbal support (bad handler). He then managed about 9 of 12 weaves. In Exec FAST he didn't run straight out across the send line to the tire - he veered off to the right and only completed 2 of 3 obstacles in the send.  Next time I need a straight send I think I will use his obedience retrieve send signal since it sends him straight ahead.

Mike Loftis was taking trial photos and got a nice photo of Bern on the A-frame.  I'll post links when the photos are uploaded to the web.