Saturday at the Regionals

SUMMARY: Tika does well, Boost doesn't

I'm tired so this will (probably) be (mercifully) short. Not posting general results, which is silly--I was there and working score table and could have gotten them. But nooo, didn't occur to me until now. But I was busy enough that I haven't even written down my own dogs' scores yet, just kind of glanced at them.

We did DAM Team and Grand Prix Round 1 today.

Tika did reasonably well in Team; one refusal on a Standard course that claimed a lot of dogs; one bar in a Jumpers course on which maybe half the dogs went off course; 7th of 53 in Gamblers, and I think 9th in Snooker. And she didn't E in the Ream Relay, either. Her partners weren't quite as lucky this time around--including a heartbreaking E in the Team Relay where the judge Eed the dog because, he said, the dog had stopped at the bottom of the dogwalk all the way off and then stepped backwards with one foot onto the contact. Oh, well. But 38 teams Qed, and we were--38th. By the hair of the whiskers of our teeth!

Boost's teammates did fairly well today, too, and Boost did credibly in Gamblers. In STandard, I thought we had Eed on refusals again, but in fact survived with only a weave pop-out and 2 refusals. However, in Snooker we had catastrophic weave failure in the opening so ended with 7 points; in Jumpers we looked like we'd never been on a course together before; and in Team we Eed with a zillion refusals plus popped out of the weaves pllus finally at the end ran past a jump for an offcourse.

So Boost won't be running in anything at Nationals this year.

In Grand Prix, Tika was uninspired--it was hot, she probably needed to potty; I was hot and probably needed to potty--she edged her way down the dogwalk rather than running--but in fact we Qed with 0 faults, only the 4th time (if I'm remember the count correctly) in her whole life where she Qed without 5 faults. But this was the same thing last year--in round 1, 0 faults; in round 2, where we really needed 0 faults to be in the top 50% to get a bye into the semis, 5 faults.

So we'll see what happens tomorrow.

Interestingly, we got through well over 400 runs per ring by (I think) 6:00 or a little after. Things went very well overall, and it was quite warm and humid for here but really not stunningly hot, and we had a firm breeze all afternoon.

OK, dogs barking, me tired, bedtime.