I really should have know better...

Against my better judgment, I entered Skye in a few runs for this weekend's USDAA trial outdoors in Brighton. Last year, this was our Regional, over the July 4th weekend, and last year the temps were high 90's to low 100's.

Skye really runs poorly & slow in the heat, so I thought if I only entered him in the first 2 classes of the day, we'd be done early before the day really heated up. I am closing in on my Performance ADCH so I really didnt want to skip the trial altogether.

On Friday, we only ran Gamblers (first thing) and Standard. Well, we missed the gamble, and I know its a lack of training for distance challenges when he comes blindly out of a tunnel. He seems to always suck back to me after the tunnel instead of staying straight and driving to the next obstacle. We had a decent opening and would have had 1st if we got the gamble. Then we ran Standard, but as it turns out, it was AFTER they ran 80 dogs in Grand Prix, along with a 1/2 hour delay due to someone falling and breaking their ankle (hope you are better Judy!). This put my Standard run starting at about 2:00pm, with the temp at 85 degrees and humid. Skye ran most of it OK, a little slow, but after the table there was a U shaped offcourse tunnel wrapped under the AFrame, so the dog had the choice of 2 tunnel entrances and the AF. Skye practically pushed me out of the way to get an offcourse on the tunnel. So Friday was a bust.

Today (Saturday) we signed up for the first 2 classes - Standard and Snooker, along with Perf. Steeplechase, as we still need that to qualify fully for Championships. The day started off cool, and we ran Standard pretty early. Guess what, there's another f'n U shaped tunnel under the AF again. This was a pretty tough course and we had it except wouldnt you know, the (free to good home) Skyeboy found a way to mess this up again! I positioned a cross after a jump to really ensure he would get on the AF, and he did, and as I went to go to the other side of it, he jumped off and into the tunnel. Tweeeeeettt. Grrrr. Damnit. Put him back on the AF and we finished clean.
We then ran Perf. Steeplechase and had a nice run - not his fastest, but still good, that is until he popped out of the weaves at the 10th pole. Can we waste anymore time here!! Back to the weaves, he gets them the second time and we finish clean (and we got our last Q for Champs, yeah!). We JUST squeaked into the 2nd round for tomorrow with our 7 or 8 seconds wasted with weaves.
Then came Snooker and it sucked. I changed my plan from what I was initially going to do, and we got the opening, but I had to tell Skye 3 times to weave the 6 stinking weave poles in the 7pt combination. He is really aggravating me with the "I don't want to" attitude about weaving, and it wasnt very hot today, maybe 77, though it was humid. We got 5/7/7/ in the opening, and he didnt push out to the #2 in the closing, just staying by my side so we were done. I doubt we could have made it past #6 with all the time wasting at the weaves anyway.

So, we have another go at it Sunday. I signed up for the first 2 runs - Snooker again, and Pairs, and now we have Round 2 of Steeplechase. I'm hoping for a better day!