Chatham Trial Nov. 22 & 23, 2008

Cheetah and I went to Chatham KC's agility trail last weekend. It was a little risky going to an outdoor trail the weekend before Thanksgiving. The weather on Saturday morning was pretty chilly, but luckily I had many layers on. Cheetah wore her fuzzy Foggy Mountain Coat and stayed snuggled up in her crate in the van until her runs.

There were 3 runs/day Fast, Std, JWW.

Sat - Fast class - 1st place.
This send was fairly challenging, they went from a tunnel out to the chute, but there was a jump next to it that was closer to you, so if you didn't keep them on their same path, they would go in on you. After the chute they took the triple, but most dogs that had problems had it with the chute/jump discrimination. Only 5 dogs in excellent got this send. four of them were from Love on a leash ( go us!)

Sat - JWW class - She took an off course - can you guess which one? "Carpe Weavum"

Sat - Std class - bad Aframe, and some other wild stuff. Once we NQ'd she got a little crazy. Very nice DW though. and a good Teeter.

Sun- Fast class- 1st place
This send was had potential to be challenging b/c of the contact performance. I planned to cross behind after the chute and sent her over the a-frame. Because I was behind a little bit, she took the extra stride she needed to go all the way through the yellow and also turned her head to check with me a little bit. That lined her up good for the correct end of the tunnel. The jump afterwards was easy.

Sun- JWW class - 1 place
She handled this well, and saved my butt. I had planned to do a rear cross on the takeoff side of the #4 jump, but I was too worried that she might see one of the side jumps down the line so I used motion to cue her to stay with me, but I rushed it and actually got almost ahead of her. I knew if I decelerated to keep on the take off side, that we would have a "failure to communicate" so I went to the landing side of 4, which was dangerously close to the off course tunnel, so I am crossing behind her at her heels and yelling right, RIGHT, RIGHT! and she did....good girlie! the rest was very nice.

Sun - Std class - oops I did it again!
I pulled her off of the teeter too soon and to a wrong course jump. The rest of the course was very nice, She actually paused at the bottom of the a-frame and hit a hard 3 o'clock weave entry that I thought I would be up with her to "help" her, but I was not up there, but she got it anyway! I needed to go forward on the teeter a step or two so that she would stay longer and I would do my front cross in the correct spot. then we kinda faked our way out of the ring.

The weather was much better on Sunday - I actually took off my coat when I wasn't running.

Next week, we go to MAD CO in Charlottesville so until then.....See ya!

P.S. - Oh yeah check out the videos!