Luke had an incredible day at our NADAC trial yesterday. Saturday was a slow start due to us not being able to train right now. We only got two Q's out of six, BUT one of them was in Elite Weavers!!! We really struggle for time in that class, but Luke was on fire and came in 0.5 seconds under time (so just barely!!) even with a slight bobble on course. We're one Q away from his elite title in that class now. Our other Q was earned during a beautiful Jumpers round.
Yesterday was our glory day, though. I completely flubbed up a couple of front crosses in the first class (Elite Jumpers), causing him to bring down a couple of bars. After that, though, we clicked and Q'd in the final 5 classes of the day.
One of those classes happened to be Elite Chances. If you are familiar with NADAC classes, you will know how hard this class is. We have been trying since MAY to Q in this class -- We've come close in the last several trials. In one trial he even managed to get the hard stuff, but knocked one bar on course for a NQ. This course yesterday was *hard*. Everyone was grumbling about it during the course walk. In Elite Chances you deal with the three D's -- Distance, Discrimination & Directionals -- and you do them all at a distance of up to 30+ feet, essentially running the course from a box in the center of the ring.
Yesterday's course was two jumps to a tunnel under the A-frame, sending out to a jump (10' away) to another jump that was layered (15';) with a flip out to a tunnel (about 25' from the line) followed by a send through a hoop (a good 30' away) then a call back through another hoop, send to a tunnel, push to an out jump (15';) back to the layered jump, another jump, over the A-frame with the tunnel discrimination (15';) and then, if you've made it this far, send the dog to the straight jump and not pull him to the jump nearest you, as we couldn't cross the line. LUKE DID IT. And he did it beautifully! He made it look absolutely effortless. I was so proud of him that I nearly cried. I now have *hope* that we can possibly do this 12 more times to have the Q's necessary for our NATCH and Versatility NATCH -- we're already close on most of the other points, but I had almost given up hope that we'd ever get an Elite Chances Q. Now I know we can do it!
Our other Q's for the day were in both Regular rounds, Touch-n-Go (he got EVERY single contact the entire weekend!) and a very difficult Tunnelers course. It was a fantastic day, especially for a dog who hasn't trained for two months!! The sad part -- no video!! 