Independence Weekend USDAA - Saturday

SUMMARY: Thank goodness for Tika.

Pretty much a dull post today. No photos. No humor.  Not too much whining.  No juicy gossip.

Here's how the day went.

Boost:

• Jumpers: 2 bars, a runout, two or three turns the wrong way, spins before jumps--wow.
• Snooker: She did her parts perfectly, but I incorrectly took my eyes off her to look ahead during a turn and she went off course.
• Standard: I front crossed in the wrong place, NOT taking my eyes off her but eyes off the course and so, figures, put her onto the wrong obstacle for an off course. The opposite of Snooker. But obstacles 1-3 and 6-19 were beautiful.
• Gamblers: Beautiful opening for 25 seconds, but the time was 30 seconds and the wheels started to come off as she ran past a tire and then ran under the tire and then we were out of position for the gamble and, bleah.
• Pairs Relay: Just absolutely lovely. But no Q because our partner had issues. That's OK because I knew what I was possibly getting into when I signed up. 
• Steeplechase: Missed her weave entry and I had to go back for it, and a bar down, combining to mean (along with the blazing speeds of the top dogs) no Q. But I felt pretty good about the run otherwise, really tried pushing her and me and releasing early from the Aframe and all that, and we both did well at it.

Tika:

• Jumpers. Lovely. Same course and (I think) handling as for Boost, and WHAT a pleasure it was to run her! She is so good, so forgiving, just GETS it. Q and 1st place (of 3 veteran dogs).
• Snooker: I tried to work the tunnels hard, but she was having trouble getting into them anyway, 3 tunnels. Still, we got through #5 in the closing before I forgot to do a front cross for some stupid reason and she VERY EASILY went into the off-course tunnel (4th on the course). Doesn't that just figure? Still, nice to run her even if it wasn't a Q.

Today, legs are more tired but I still felt able to move comfortably around the courses. Jogging here and there between classes was fine. This is in *such* contrast to the last couple of trials where the knees hurt so much doing even that.  Foot feels mostly OK, just sometimes I step wrong and *ouch*.

Good friends, good times, good judges, interesting courses that flowed reasonably well from all the judges so far, nothing that I felt was too herky-jerky or overly technical. Challenging, yes, but fun to run. Love when that happens.

One more day, just 4 classes for us tomorrow but there are Masters Challenge classes between the 1st and last classes of the day in both Masters rings that we didn't enter, so might not be a super-early end to the weekend.

It's only 7:45--is it too early to go to bed?