A Good Start

I'm sure I'll be tested in the upcoming months but for now I can say hooray for maintaining my goals for 2012 trialing! Baby Steps...

But seriously, given the fact that there were several items "on the line" (you know, if you care about titles and nationals and stuff like that, winky face) I am proud of maintaining my chill and focus and not messing with The Dog's fragile psyche. One giant leap for Project Go Dog.
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So, how did we do in our chilled state? In a word: awesome! In more words:

Friday we had one run only, my nemesis Grand Prix. I hoped that coming in fresh would help us since it had once before and I was right! She did a great job and ran really well. I let her go a bit wide on a few turns in order to save some jumps, but she was overall tight and fast. Super zippy poles and a happy dogwalk with decent response after. All together equaling a big fat Q, finishing our 2012 Nationals requirements AND her Tournament Gold title. Yaaaaay! It was second place too, in a pack of great dogs with times all squished within a few tenths. Icing.

Saturday we had Gamblers, Standard and Snookers. Gamblers was our only NQ of the weekend and it was due to ME not running a good plan for her gamble. She had a good opening though with many points and she had fun; she was crazy proud of herself for doing what she thought was the gamble.

Standard was lovely- best run of the weekend by far. Very fast- best time of ALL dogs. Sure helps when The Dog remembers to do her table correctly!!

Snookers Saturday and Sunday were both great, great runs. I had been doing SOMEthing wrong in this class for a while (6 months?). From Qing almost every time to NQing almost every time- clearly we lost the mojo.  I am determined to get it back. After deciding it was most likely due to not running the best plan for my dog and instead running just the 'best plan' I went back to the former. Ding ding ding! And a Duh for good measure.  Saturday was a pretty competitive plan and a good time on it, event though we did many weaves. Sunday didn't seem competitive to me but it was good enough for a Super Q and third. Yay.

Of course, it wouldn't be a weekend running The Dog if there wasn't a moment of weird. In the second Standard run she pulled up at the start (out of a tunnel?!?) and stopped and looked at me for several seconds before resuming. Then it was good. Weird.  Still a good time despite that, but too bad about the start!


We also had a Pairs run- one that we needed! We've been waiting since November for a chance to finish our Silver Pairs title and therefore our Silver ADCh.  And we made it! Thanks Diva Black Dog! It was dicey (did they both have to knock their only bars of the weekend on THAT run??) but lucky they are speedy so still managed the Q. 

In honor of her Silver ADCh, we borrowed a ribbon and took rare celebratory photos with BOTH of us. See how schmoopie sweet we are? Isn't it sick? I do love The Dog though...

And since I don't have the actual run recorded, please accept video of my favorite run of the weekend in its place, Standard Saturday. Much prettier to watch than our Pairs run, promise!