Friday – Practice and Check - in

Cheetah and I in front of the sign at the arena




Our practice time was around 12:30, so we could sleep in a bit and go to breakfast, for some more local fair. Toni and I then went up to the practice field to scope out what the set up was and to figure out what particular things Cheetah and I needed practice on. Katie suggested that we not worry too much about tricky handling maneuvers, because if they didn’t go well in practice you would go into the competition on a bad note. Basically, get them exposed to the different types of equipment they have and keep it simple.




We met for our practice time and ended up having a pretty good practice. The teeter was very strange and I wanted to make sure that she did not have a bad experience on it. When I got to the teeter, I had her wait then went to the end of the teeter and called her up – holding it in place and lowering it. It was kind of a slippery rubber matting and lots of dogs were flying off of it. She did good. I sent her around another loop and let her do it on her own; she did good. I did it once more with no problems then I went on to the a-frame. She didn’t stop, and repeated it, again with out a stop. I should have marked it better, but we only had 45 seconds out there so by the time you repeat a few things, you are finished.







Next we went to the jumpers side again for a 45 seconds session while the little dogs went to the contact side. She did fine, except she missed her weave entry, which I made a little bit hard on purpose. The weaves are really odd and fat, made of metal and all a solid color (yellow). The bottom of the contacts are red not yellow and they are also rubberized. The jump bars looked like branches with the twigs cut off and painted. I don’t have a bar knocking problem, but I would think if you did you dog would soon change it ‘s mind. All and all it was a pretty successful practice.

Later we went to go check in with the vet and make sure our paperwork was in order. During that time, Cheetah met two new boyfriends...Tracy Golden's Blink and Bam. She flirted with them and they were more than happy to flirt back. She has a real thing for male BC's





We also took a group photo!


On a very sad note, one of the USA team members Stacy came with her Schnauzer Crusher and when she got to the vet check, they stated that he couldn't compete b/c he had his ears cropped. No where in any thing they had read mentioned this, but they simply refused to listen to reason. It was a very sad moment for us, and I can't even imagine how it would feel to go all the way over there and be told you can't play and not even be reimbursed for anything.