Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Finally! The Summer agility season is here!!!

Guides canins offered a "starters" evening, and I was brave enough to register.  Although the venue is a beautiful one, Jasmine and I don't usually do well here, so reason enough for me to push myself and compete.  I registered Jasmine in starters standard, starters snooker, and stargers gamblers.

It's certainly a "no frills" event.  The trial itself will last well into the weekend, but most competitors have not arrived yet.  I'm sure that by the time Friday will come along, the place will be a circus!

All three fields are ready and available to walk.  The judge's briefing is done at the very beginning, then competitors are welcome to walk the courses at long and as many times as they want.  The only downside is the very brief 5 minute break between events, which includes the official "walk".

Our first event, SG, isn't that bad.  We've spent a lot of time practicing teeters, a-frames, and the dog walk, but that's become a problem.  Jasmine absolutely loves them now and instead of going to the tunnel as planned after the jump, she heads for the A-Frame and (GASP!) blind-closses me at the same time.  I was surprised, but made sure she nose touched the ground.  We did the mini (YAY!) and the 12 weaves.  Unfortunately, I haven't done any distance work with her and we didn't do the main gamble.  Oh well....

The second event was the ST.  Believe it or not, we ran out of time.  I know that we wasted precious seconds at the weaves, but was that enough?  My little precious did her down on the table "yes!", but she took the wrong end of the tunnel, so it would have been an NQ anyways.  Hey!  I wasted time with that as well!  We also wasted time just before the table too!!!  Well, that explains everything!

Last but not least, the SS.  Personally, I call it the medieval torture device, but was pretty confident with my plan.  The down side is Jasmine didn't wrap around the jump (the last red jump!) as planned and took it twice.  There goes my plan!  : )

Things to work on in the next few weeks:
  • Wrap around jumps. 
  • Tunnel entries.
  • Distance.
  • Short sequences with weaves.  Jasmine walked right by the 6 weaves in the ST.
  • Keep up the work on the contact obstacles.
  • Shadow handling.
No pictures... Sorry!  Yes, I should have....

A first for me, I ran out of air in Gamblers... Nerves?  Jasmine's speed?  Yes, Jasmine was quite fast in the Gamblers.... 

Jasmine's last word?  Prancing on our way back to the car....  She was quite proud of herself and happy to be back doing agility.

1 comment:

  1. Boy your description of your events sounds familiar. But it does sound like there was great improvement, an A-frame with a nose touch, 12 weaves and mini gamble, very impressive.

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