Mixed Bag But Mostly Good

SUMMARY: Tika Qs, Boost back to the drawing board.

Tika's Monday

Tika Qed in all 3 classes today:
- A difficult, technical Jumpers course, in which only 13 of 38 26" dogs ran clean. So weird in Jumpers to be 7 seconds below the standard course time and still come in merely 12th. We just don't have the speed of those young border collie whippersnappers.

- A Snooker course that was basically Jumpers-with-weaves. Out of 38 26" dogs, we were one of only 8 to successfully complete all four reds and get to the end of the closing to end up in Super-Q range--but she was the slowest of those dogs with the same number of points, and only 6 were Super-Qs. (See previous BC whippersnapper note.)

- Standard, in which she was smooth and competent--but there was that 4 seconds or more of standing on the table saying "Down is not of interest to me at this time," and she's usually a pretty decent table-downer. (See previous note re: BC whippersnappers.)

The big success for the day: Didn't knock a single bar in 3 jump-intensive courses.

So that's 6 Qs out of 9 opportunities, putting us comfortably above 50% for the weekend. Now we need only 3 more Qs of any kind for our Lifetime Achievement Award (LAA) bronze. We can most likely do that at our next trial in 2 weeks.

Boost's Monday

Back to the drawing board on refusals, bar-knocking, and runouts.

- Standard wasn't actually half bad. But, jeez, when you send a tunnel-loving dog to a tunnel and she turns back to you just before she then goes into it (for a refusal) and then when I'm trying to run past a jump to get a front cross in so I KNOW I wasn't slowing down, and she STILL stops right in front of the jump and turns to see what I'm doing...jeez! But other than that, it wasn't bad.

- The Jumpers course was built deliberately (deliberately, I tell you!) to bring out our worst performance in all of those areas. I think we knocked 6 bars, had refusals or runouts on 8 or 9 of the jumps, and Eed maybe 2 or 3 times in the process. Bleah.

- Snooker was just a nice smooth series of front-cross exercises, which we failed miserably at. We did finally manage to get 31 points before bar knocking and refusals took us out of the competition.

The big success for the weekend was WEAVING POLES! Missed not a single entrance, popped out not a single time, and did them FAST. What a weavin' hound! Now, back to the drawing board on the other issues.

Oh, yeah, and that table down that isn't a down, where she slowly lifts her elbows half an inch of the table, causing the judge to stop his count until I can get her to lie down again. Today, she never even went down at all at the beginning, just stopped with her elbows about four inches off the table. I just stood there, saying calmly and firmly, "Down." "Boost, Down." (I wasn't going to give in to bending over or kneeling or pleading or getting my head lower than hers--she is not the King of Siam!) And finally I said, "No, I mean a REAL down," and then she dropped her elbows and the judge laughed.

Bay Team Regionals in the News

News link to brief bit on our trial, talking to Nancy Gyes (our trial chair) and a couple of other folks, and video in the background of Nancy, another local competitor, and others. I recognized several local competitors caught incidentally in the background, but not me!