Saturday at the Agility Park

Bay Team's CPE trial at Twin Creeks in Sunnyvale was today and continues tomorrow. Niether dog is going to get high in trial--again--but we did mostly kinda OK. Each dog had five runs today.

Tika: Pretty good stay at the start line, although in Colors she insisted on lying down (put her back in a Sit twice and she still lay down when I walked away), and then she was so close to the first jump that she just plain crashed through it. Contacts were lovely, although she's starting to leave them before I say "OK" again. I need to be more stubborn about that tomorrow. Didn't leave the ring or do anything else dumb like that. Need to be careful with her at the end of the run--looks like she's starting to grab at me (not my feet, either, but jumping up at me) with her mouth, which could be a very bad thing. But she's so good when she calms down, which she does pretty quickly--I can even leave the ring without her on a leash (if the leash isn't there at the moment) without worrying about her racing off or blowing me off when I call her back. Mostly she's looking for her treat bag, I think, so that keeps her focused. Had a lovely gamblers' run for 1st and Q, which moves her up to Level 4 in that tomorrow; snooker she knocked the first bar but this time I planned for it and had an alternative--unfortunately then she got ahead of me again & I couldn't push her out past the wrong obstacle at the end of the opening. Standard run she knocked a bar, but that was good for a 1/2 Q which moves her up to Level 5 (!) for tomorrow and beyond. Go figure, though--with crashing the bar in Colors, we're pretty much proving that we can't get even *one* leg at level 2 in that class! So she'll now be in--depending on the class--Level 2, 3, 4, and 5! Not many dogs with that much distribution. Her full house run was very nice, too, although she knocked a bar in the middle so I did an awkward make-up that cost us some points--but she was still one of the highest-scoring and also earned a Q.

Jake was a fairly good boy, excep that *he* knocked the first bar in snooker--and since he virtually never knocks bars, I didn't anticipate it and we were immediately offcourse. Dang! So much for earning all but one of the legs we need for our CATCH this weekend... I don't know why he knocked it, either. His gambler's opening was excellent but I bobbled getting him up the Aframe at the beginning of the gamble, and then he did the whole thing perfectly but over time. Full House was a very nice run for us and he took first and a Q, even against the Awesome Max who pretty much got Qs and 1sts all day (and is quite a bit younger than Jake, too), so I was pleased about that. And he did get the Colors run he needed to fill out the playlist for his CATCH, so at least we got one of them. And his standard run was very nice almost to the end when once again he took off in a beeline without noticing what I was doing and took an offcourse halfway across the field. I just don't know...

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