Saturday, January 16, 2010

Why Hello There

Wow, it's been almost a year since I posted anything here... I'm really not so great at this thing I guess, but I have something to share today!

Philip and I went to our very first Agility trial today. It was a USDAA trial and we ran 3 courses. It was a very long day - I woke up at 5:15am and left home by 6:15am to get to the site, set up, and be ready to check in by 7:15am.

Once we checked in, we were soon up and running our first course. It was a Starters Standard course and unfortunately Philip knocked the bar off of the first jump, which automatically disqualified us for that run, but we still finished the course and he did pretty good for the rest of it. He did have a minor hick-up at the weave poles, but that is pretty common with him, so it was expected. He also took a wrong course at the tricky part where the A-frame was set close to the jump. We were supposed to go over the jump, but he went for the frame. Oh well, all in all it was a good warm-up for us.

The second run of the day was Starters Gambler. This is a special run consisting of two parts - first is to gather points by doing whatever obstacles we want in 30 seconds, and second is to do the "gamble" which involves handling the dog from a distance. We started off great on the run and gathered up 23 points (18 minimum needed) before the buzzer to start the gamble. The gamble consisted of a jump, followed by two tunnels and another jump. Philip went over the jump and into the first tunnel like a pro, but he got confused at the second tunnel, so he had to run back to me and back out there. He did do the gamble correctly at the end, but unfortunately took just a bit too long with the detour, so we didn't qualify this run either (there is a time limit for the gamble).

Last run of the day for us was Starters Jumpers. In USDAA this consists of just jumps and tunnels, which are some of Philip's favorite obstacles. I was optimistic for this one, and for good reasons - we did great! We finished first with no faults at all - a great clean run and our first ever Q!!!

After all the ordeal, we got home around 3pm. Overall, I think it was a great first day. Tomorrow is the second day of the trial, and we'll be doing 3 more runs (standard, snooker, and pairs). I'll write all about it when we are back home.

1 comment:

JuLo said...

Wow, how fun! I'd love to see you and Philip run at a trial some time. Sounds like he did great for a first timer, especially on that last one! Theo also likes tunnels and jumps. :)