Meeker's USDAA Return - RACE Agility 2011-Jan
09 Jan 2011
Meeker and I competed in the RACE Agility USDAA on New Years Weekend at the Regional Soccer Center in Crystal Lake, IL. At the start of the weekend my goals were to chip away at the 5 legs we need to complete his ADCH and to qualify in the Grand Prix and Steeplechase rounds for Nationals. We needed 2 Gamblers, 1 Snooker Super Q, and 2 Pairs legs. I didn't get video of every run but here are the qualifiers and a couple others:On Saturday, I was in the wrong place when the Gamble timer went off and screwed up his line into the Gamble, it hurts because it was a “do-able” gamble for us. Then we Qualified in Grand Prix and Steeplechase which was great. I almost screwed up our Pairs run when I didn’t support a jump as much as I should have and earned a refusal, but we still Qualified.
On Sunday we started with Jumpers, the run felt good and we took 1st place with our Q. In Gamblers Meeker was distracted by my handing the leash to the leash runner and as soon as I stepped away he took the first obstacle… I recovered and was almost in the right place when the gamble tone went off, but my delaying still cost us the Gamble by 0.2 seconds. I actually didn’t think we’d be able to get that gamble, so it was a lesson for me. In Snooker I had a good plan, I’d walked it and was ready. It was more like a Team Snooker course where you had to take a red, a straight tunnel and then a color. We got to the first color and Meeker was getting a little ahead of me. I called his name as I normally would to get him to collect. I was stunned as he pulled completely off the jump and did a 360 and took the jump going to his left instead of his right as I’d planned. So there we were facing each other over the jump. In that split second he took the jump and we were done… 7 points is a long way from a Super Q!
Thanks to my videographers and especially to Jeanette who found my video camera after the trial and delivered it to For Your K9 for me!
So there is a fair amount to improve in these runs, but I’m still happy just to be able go to the line with him in a trial. So we’ll work on the rest as I am more confident in his physical recovery. Until then I’ll keep taking agility one day at a time.
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