Yes, Its ALWAYS something! Skye USDAA.

Skye and I had a much better USDAA weekend in Brighton. This was another outdoor trial on grass. We ended up 4 of 8 Q's and I was pretty happy with almost all of our runs.

Of course, lately it seems I cant buy a Standard Q.

On Saturday, we Q'd Performance Grand Prix with a 3rd place (finally a GP Q!!), and we Q'd Pairs with Lorrie & Maxx. Our pairs run may have been fast enough for 1st place but Maxx had 2 refusals so there was some time wasting plus 10 fault seconds added to our time.

On Sunday, we Q'd a tough Snooker course with a 3rd, just missing out on the 2 SQ's they gave out. To end the day, we had a nice Jumpers run and Q'd with 1st place!

Saturday's Standard course had a number of tough elements to it. There were some sharp angles that caused dropped bars, the really tough weave entry (that got Skye and I) , the AF/Tunnel discrimination (that got Skye and I) and quite a few side changes. Only 3 dogs out of 60 Q'd this course!

Sunday's Standard was much more doable, and we had it except that Skye again popped out of the weaves at pole 10. This time I took him back and made him do them again as it seems to be developing into a habit of his.

The good news- Skye again hit all his dogwalk contacts. The bad news- we got called for another AFrame contact.

So, what I am taking away from this trial is:

• I realllly need to go back and retrain Skye's weave entries and having him stay in the poles.
  
• Though he loves contacts, I still need to work these contact/tunnel discriminations when he is supposed to do the contact. No assumptions!
• I must get back to some distance training. Our Gamblers skills have been lacking.
  

Always Something!

OTOTD - Odd Thoughts of the Day

Some odd thoughts of the day...

1. At least once a day, all the dogs will howl. Usually one of them outside will start it, and the rest of them in the house will join in. I will often join in. Rip has a WoooWoooooWoooo kind of howl, while Skye will bark-howl.
2. Dogs train themselves to notice certain cues all day. For example, when I end a conference call (I work from home), it seems I will say Ok, Bye a certain way, and then any dogs in my office will get up and be ready to do something, even though I havent yet moved...they just know that I probably will.
3. Why do some handlers yell "Stay" at the bottom of a contact when they obviously don't mean it?
4. Our deaf dog Joey hates when I hammer nails while doing home improvement projects. I was replacing a window today, and when I would hammer, he whined and carried on in his crate. He could not see me.
5. At approximately 3:20 every day, Rip will come and poke me with his nose to tell me its time to play ball.
6. Bless you folks who have the stick_to_it_ivness to run a dog in agility who gives the impression that sniffing the ground is more fun than agility, or whose attention span is 4 obstacles. I could never do it, and am amazed at the patience of those who can.
7. Why do we all feel the need to make some hissing sound, or clap, or say "get it" over and over again while our dogs are weaving? Guilty as charged...
8. I would be fine if I never heard the word "twitter" ever again.
9. I never before kept a diary or journal or wrote very much until this whole Blogging phase came about. Why is it so interesting, and why do I need to read a bunch of them every day?
10. What is so satisfying about peeling the green cover off a tennis ball, or dissecting a squeaky toy to take out the squeaker, or tearing newspaper into strips? Dogs do strange things.
    

Our runs from last week's AKC

These are the runs that I wrote about in this post: