CPE Weekend Results

SUMMARY: Bars. Weaves.

Tika's Bars

Here's how many jumps Tika actually took this weekend: 86. Here's how many she knocked: 3. Here's how many classes she didn't Q in: 3. Coincidence? I think not. Dang; she'd been doing so well in CPE at keeping her bars up.

One of those non-Qs, however, was combined with her apparent long-term strategy that "Come" means " ". On a long lead-out in Snooker, she knocked the first red bar, and when I stood still, facing her, and kept yelling Come Come COME!!!, she made a sharp right turn and took the tire. So that's yet another 0-point Snooker run to our lifetime credit, of which she has now earned 8. (That's out of 116 Snooker runs. That's almost 7% of her runs! Jeez.) Jake had only two 0s of 96 Snookers; Remington never had a 0-point snooker run. Because he pretty much never ever knocked bars. Boost, though, is on her way--she has managed two zero-pointers already out of 35. (That's 5.7% for those of you who like weird numbers like that.)

Boost's Bars

And speaking of knocking bars--Boost knocked 12 out of 89 for the weekend. This is a bad number. She hit 4 in one Jumpers run. Out of the 4 bars that she needed to keep up to Q in Colors to finally finish our Level 3 title, she managed to keep up only 3 of them. Of the 4 bars that she needed to keep up to get a 51-point Snooker, she managed to keep only 3 of them up. At least it was the last bar, not the first--Tika, are you listening?

Boost's Weaves

And Boost's weaves went south again this weekend! After being pretty much pefect since late last summer. She attempted 6 sets of weaves on Saturday and took at least 2 tries on every one before getting them. The first 3 that she tried on Sunday required 4 or more tries. The last of those 4, when she popped in and out of the entrance, I made her stop and put her back at the previous jump in a sit, so she had to sit and wait and think about it, then when she popped out at #10 anyway, I actually was so frustrated that I yelled "No!" on course, violating my own rule against punishment in the ring. I made her stop and wait and very slowly do the last 2 poles correctly, then went on.

Then I just made extra efforts to be in position to babysit the entrances and exits, and she nailed the next 2 sets, and I cheered and praised loudly and enthusiastically and she seemed happy about it. So, for the last run of the weekend, I risked some challenging entrances to the 7-point weaves in the Snooker opening, and she got all three of them like a weavin' genius! Dang dogs.

Tika's Contacts and Scores

Tika's contacts were light on the contact part all weekend, but when I really yelled and was right there with her (which was hard in several places), she managed to get toenails into the yellow zones. But one Standard run combined an A-frame flyoff with a knocked bar for a non-Q, and the Jackpot flyoff on one A-frame meant that she lost her only chance to be the highest-scoring dog of all dogs entered; instead, she was the 4th-highest.

In Full House, usually our forte for whupping everyone's scores, I misdirected her twice so we took a couple of lower-point obstacles instead of a couple of 5-pointers, putting her at 7th highest (although 3 of those were small dogs with more time).

No Perfect Weekend, No Fastest Times

Tika tried hard, though, to have the fastest times of all dogs entered. But she kept getting beaten by either Chance--a pretty danged fast sheltie who jumps 12" instead of Tika's 24"--or Tahoe, a USDAA-national-champion-type veteran dog who also was jumping 12" this weekend to relax and just stay fit before the April 4-day USDAA extravaganza (Really, you think an Aussie jumping 12" could beat Tika's times?!)--or by both, so she was 2nd or 3rd fastest of all dogs in 5 of the 7 timed classes.

Dang, and Qed only 7 of 10, not her best CPE weekend. Boost was only 5 for 10. But, boy, does she have nice sticky 2-on, 2-off contacts, and a great start-line stay!

Wrap Up and The Blues

The weather was lovely; as usual I kept forgetting sunscreen on Saturday; had a good time with my friends. Got some videos, too; if I have time sometime I might post a couple. My prediction was correct that my dogs would place first in all their classes (helps being the only 24" dogs in our levels), so that kind of blue weekend I can handle! (Although I took home only the 1st place ribbons for classes in which we actually Qed.)