Jake and Tika do NADAC

I keep trying to write about Remington but I can't do it here yet.

But Tika and Jake and I went to the 2nd day of the Elk Grove NADAC agility trial Sunday because staying home the day before with all of the reminders was tearing me apart. After we got through all of the "sorry"s, I was able to spend most of the day concentrating on my 2 beasts and their runs.

Jake had a great day. He qualified in 5 out of 5 runs, which is a pretty good percentage. He's now entered in Veterans, so he's not competing against as many dogs, and he's jumping a mere 12" instead of the 20" he jumped all the way through earning his NATCH. Still, I managed to get him into SuperJake mode for at least 2 of the runs, and he was merely fast in the others; we were in synch; didn't make stupid handler errors. It was a nice time. He took 2 firsts, a second, and a third--didn't stay long enough to see whether he placed in the last event. And his times and scores were good enough that he'd have placed in the regular classes, as well. So I'm pretty pleased with that.

I especially wanted to be there because NADAC now allows you (doesn't kick you out or yell at you) to do things that would be considered training in the ring in other organizations, and since she'd been popping contacts 2 weeks ago at the trial, I wanted to give it a try here. Sure enough, she did it here, too.

First run, she didn't stay at the start line. I brought her back, made her take the position again, and I didn't have problems with that the rest of the day. First run, she flew off the Aframe and went to check a corner of the ring, but came back to me. I had her do that contact again, and she stuck it, then stuck the teeter and dogwalk also. I thought we had it licked.

But the second round, she popped the dogwalk; made her do it again. Stuck the teeter, flew off the Aframe; made her do it again.

In gamblers, I picked a course that would've been really nice if she had stuck her contacts, but she popped the Aframe once, I made her do it again, then she popped the DW twice and stuck the third time. Again stuck the teeter OK.

Jumpers doesn't have contacts in it--but I said "go" when it should've been "come" on a curving row of jumps.

Last run of the day was touch-n-go, which is all tunnels and contacts. She popped the first Aframe and when I stopped, she tootled out into the field before finally coming back my way. I took her off.

Our instructor says we did exactly the right thing for where she is at the moment.

But I also think she has tunnel suck--I think I remember at least 4 occasions where she blasted into a tunnel ahead of her when that wasn't what I wanted her to do. I'll have to think about this. She *does* love tunnels.

In class today, she went chasing off after squirrels or memories of squirrels or whatever 3 or 4 times and wouldn't come back. Argh. It's like we're right back at the beginning again. I haven't really had her out at the gopher/squirrel park since Rem got worse in January, I think, because I didn't want to have to monitor him and her, too. So I guess I need to do more of that. Although we *did* practice *constantly* while we were up in Oregon, and she came over & over for a reward, except on 2 occasions when there was actually something out there that she wanted, which isn't the point. Grumble.

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