Deeeeep Sigh---

I'm home from the first day of a fairly local USDAA trial (put on by SMART in Prunedale, only 45 minutes from here). What a day. Once again, Tika and I seem SOOOO CLOSE to glory, only to miss it time and again. It was a different kind of day this time--offcourses that I hadn't expected or noticed in the course (usually I think I do pretty good at anticipating these).

Remember, what we need towards Tika's ADCH are 2 Jumpers, 3 Gamblers, and a Snooker Super-Q. (And I always like the opportunity to place in a Steeplechase.) But today went like this:

*Jumpers: Kept all her bars up! Offcourse right near the end--should've anticipated because i saw at least one other dog do the same thing, but I thought we'd get the turn easily.

* Steeplechase: Kept all her bars up! Offcourse halfway through an otherwise lovely run on a turn that I thought would be easy--I dropped anchor and called lightly (thought that's all it needed), she hesitated and looked towards the right obstacle, so I started moving again--so of course so did she, right over the wrong obstacle.

* Standard: Kept all her bars up! But I didn't push as hard as I meant to on a teeter entry and so she came on from the side and was called for a missed up contact.

* Grand Prix: Kept all her bars up! But got called for the dang dogwalk up contact that bites us all too often. OK, this was good enough for our only Q of the day, but who cares, I have lots of GP Qs, I wanted a placement! In fact, it was 7th place, but they had ribbons only to 6th. Sighhhh.

* Snooker--well, knocked a bar on a 7-pointer in the opening, so we wouldn't have made a SuperQ anyway, but even worse in the closing we had...sighhhhh...an offcourse on something that hadn't even occurred to me would be a problem.

But she was fast and happy, she was staying at the start line, I was releasing her from her contacts fast all day instead of holding them (I'm sure this'll come back to bite me eventually) and she was doing the whole of the contact obstacles quite fast, made all her weave entrances full speed as usual... dang dang dang.

And because I was working score table pretty much full time, Boost and Jake hardly got their noses outside their crates. I'd leave them at home except that I think Jake in particular wouldn't be all that happy being left behind, and Boost wouldn't want to be here by herself (the housemate/renter would be here, but he's got his own life that doesn't typically involve puppysitting).

Oh--and the housemate has a new job. His previous job enabled him to be home about 3:00 every afternoon, when he'd then play with the dogs in the yard for probably 5-15 minutes, depending on everyone's attitude and energy for the day. His new job has him coming in (at least for now) at random assorted times after 4:00. Boy, the dogs get antsy and whiney starting around 3:00 every day!I tried to explain to them...