Tuesday, June 26, 2007

By a hair....

Well, once again I had great intentions to post more often but well....real life gets in the way I suppose...
So, on to the news..

This past weekend was the AB/NWT Regionals and Wicca and I competed and Qualified!!! It was a great weekend and I am very proud of my little dog. We have come a LONG ways in a year and I cannot beleive what a good dog she has become. We had some really stellar runs- and runs that made me go "oh my...that was rough." :o)

Over the course of the weekend we didn't have one blown start line or one blown contact. We had a few (I think 4 overall) knocked bars and of course some blown weave pole entries. We had AWESOME Gambles- we almost had the first one and she knocked the bar on the last jump (and we've been working SO hard at that...dammit ;o) )
The second one I rushed and she took the wrong obstacle but the point gathering was great. We got lots of mini gambles, and earned a lot of points. Her standard runs were not too bad- the one on Saturday was good. I did a decent job of handling her, the one on Sunday had a rough start- an awesome middle and a horrible end. She FLEW off the teeter- which was the second last obstacle, after doing the middle portion of the course beautifully- a long fast row of jumps without one bar down and then she goes and does a superman impression off the teeter. Her teeter fly off costed us 2nd place overall...not that I'm competitive... hehe
The jumpers were pretty good. Small amount of bars knocked, and only one weird Wicca moment...The saturday jumpers was good- Sunday was interesting. There were three tunnels in the middle of the course in clover leaf pattern. She was doing great- hadn't sucked into the wrong tunnel or anything. I sent her tunnel and she went OUT around them all...what a silly dog...she earned us a refusal and then with me scrambling to get where i needed to be I didn't give her directions soon enough and we earned an off course aswell....

So over all we earned 306 points..you need 300 to qualify....we made it by a hair and I am thinking seriously of going to Nationals...I still have some things to iron out but I think it will be something that I will always remember and I may not get another chance- they are raising the points needed next year by a 100 and well...ya never know...so I might aswell take the chance when I have it...
Oh- we placed third in our class and were only 20 points behind 2nd place...We did good, Wicca and I, and I am very proud of us....

I didn't get any pictures but there was a photographer there so I am going to scope out her website and see if she got any...

I will post more later about the other beasts...