We were entered in the BARK AKC agility trial in Hattiesburg, MS. It rained on and off all weekend. May Fest was in full swing at the Forrest County Multi-Purpose Center complete with a carnival and live band performances. Friday night the bands performed in the arena but on Saturday night the band was in a pavilion adjacent to our parking spot in the RV area. I don't think it would have mattered had we been across the RV lot since the music would have still been loud. Sunday morning AAA roadside assistance had to dispatch a wrecker to help me change out a tire on the Element. I drove home Sunday afternoon on my compact spare tire in the pouring rain - avoiding the interstate and trying to keep the speed around 50 mph. Despite all these headaches I had a great weekendBern ran 4 times (2 standard, 1 jumpers, and 1 FAST runs). He ran well all weekend - 2 sets of clean weaves but managed to slide off the table so we only earned one Q. He bailed off the dog walk in FAST too early and missed the contact zone so we blew that Q also. His Saturday standard run was okay but I messed up handling one section of it and he didn't weave all 12 poles.
I think this was Grace's most consistent agility weekend to date. She was clean on both novice standard runs with the exception of one single winged jump. We got one refusal and came in 3rd place on Sunday. Her open jumpers runs were clean in that none of the bars went down and she didn't take any wrong courses - she missed a few weave poles and we had a few refusals but overall I was really happy with our teamwork. Grace and I need to do some additional distance handling work before we try for her open FAST title - she isn't quite ready to take direction from 15 feet away yet but it should come with just a little practice. [photo delayed due to rain on Sunday after her Q]
The tire has been repaired and is now back in its place on the Element. It is getting busy as work... the GIS team is assisting BP with a database to support the oil spill (the last oil spill on the MS river the firm worked I was doing lots of data management and I may end up helping with this spill also). There are a few other large/rush rush projects that may start this week. I guess too much work is better than no work in the current economy.
