USDAA This Weekend

SUMMARY: Off to Madera; the omens are mixed.

This weekend is a fairly small trial, for this area. Steeplechase. Double Snooker.

Tika and I had a wonderful class Wednesday. The weather was so balmy--cool enough that with intense exercise we were comfortable, yet could still sit briefly during "intermission" and not freeze. And everyone was in an exceptionally good mood. I haven't laughed this much in weeks. Nothing in particular that I could point out; just a lot of contextual humor and good-natured ribbing, but also lots of enthusiastic cheering for when classmates did an exercise well. And I felt that I was running better than I have in a long time--that sense of heaviness that has been dogging me (so to speak) seems to be gradually leaving, so I'm sure that my daily efforts are paying off.

And Tika ran very well, too; I think we had only one exercise all evening where we made a mistake, which is rare for us. It's the exercises that push our limits that really teach us stuff, but I felt alert and energetic and Tika was eager to go, too. A nice way to end the day.

The next day, in Boost's class, we couldn't complete a sequence worth a rat's toenail. Couldn't even get weave entries, let alone complete them. Contacts were still good, although a pull to a contact still gave us immense trouble. (Instructor said "there's that herding dog behavior", I guess it's an outrun?) Then she refused the table several times in a row; never seen that before. Gave her a rest, hosed her down, did some small things for rewards. Then she started crashing bars, so that was it for her. I've never seen her tired before, but I was making a lot of mistakes and we were redoing things so she was doing rather a lot of running.

This will be her second Advanced trial; would be n ice if we could Q in *something* this time.

Soooooo we shall see.

Complete list of labels