Dahlia went to her very first agility trial last weekend. It was
nerve wracking (for me, not her!) and a little bit scary but the folks
there were so nice!
We did two runs each
day. The first day we did something called "Wildcard" where three times
during the sequence we had to choose between obstacles to take (it
looked like this
for anyone who cares). Dahlia and I sort of seriously flubbed this
one. She didn't want to get on the dog walk! Then we did the Jumpers
course (course map here),
which consists of only jumps and tunnels (one of the nice things about
lower level CPE courses!). Dahlia did great with this one. She
completed the entire course cleanly in about 32 seconds and had no
faults. She got a qualifying score and a first place ribbon for it!
The
second day we did two new games. The first one was called Full House,
the object of which is to make up your own course to gather up a certain
number of points. You have to take some obstacles at least once, but
otherwise you're just focused on getting around a course that will get
you enough points in the allotted time (course map here).
This one was a total and complete disaster. As it turns out, she
doesn't like the contacts at this place and she doesn't have enough
experience with different types of A-Frames and dog walks, so she
refused to get on the A-Frame at all (when during class she runs it like
it's the best thing on earth!). The second run was one called Colors.
In this one they put out obstacles and have two different courses you
get to choose from. They use about the same amount of obstacles and are
very close in distance (one was 4 feet longer than the other). You can
see the course map here.
We chose to follow the squares (purple in reality). She was
completely clean on this run except she was again freaked out by the
A-Frame. This time she got up on it and decided that it wasn't going to
happen and jumped off. The rest of the run went pretty well!
So all together she ended up with a couple first place ribbons, one second place, and a qualifying ribbon for Jumpers.
Here's Dahlia in her crate, saying "Mommy can I get out now?"
[url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/crysania4/6320167876/][img]http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6045/6320167876_dcd504141d_z.jpg[/img][/url]
Here's Dahlia at the end of the first day modeling her first place,
second place, and qualifying ribbon (the sort of turquoise colored one).
[url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/crysania4/6315864667/][img]http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6120/6315864667_13aa3d4230_z.jpg[/img][/url]
And here's Dahlia on her second run of the second day. Unfortunately,
the really good run wasn't videotaped because I forgot to give my camera
to someone. Oops. So here's her almost clean run. Try not to laugh
at how slow she is. She is RIDICULOUSLY slow for an agility dog. We're working on this because, as you probably can see in the video, I slow down and hesitate before each jump, which causes her to do the same. In last night's class I focused on continuing to move and she was so much faster!
You can view the video here if you want to see it.