Pictures of the stadium taken from our room - we were very close to the rings.
Several things prompted me to make this title …rain – mud – and puking oh my…oh wait lets not forget NQing! There…that should cover it!
I woke up not feeling particularly well, nothing major, just a little queasy. I thought I would feel better after I got up and moving around.
Additionally, overnight it rained and rained and rained. The wind was blowing like crazy and we went from shorts to wishing we had several more layers to add. It reminded me of oh say the Lebanon, PA spring trial, or an outdoor Berryville trail with the mud or of the famous shoe sucking Rectortown mudfest. The once pristine green grass of the competition field would soon be turned into a swamp of 6 in deep black goop, at least on the large dog courses.
The night before we had a meeting to explain all of the little ins and outs of the regulations and that they were only going to be allowing the next 5 dogs on the field for each ring. That would be a total of 24 dogs out there at any one time…that didn’t really last very long.
We don’t get course maps so you have to walk around the ring trying to figure out where the course goes. There was this really wicked weavepole entry that was only a couple of feet from a jump that they don’t take. I didn’t feel very well to begin with, and that wasn’t helping. Elicia said not to worry, we were all in the same boat. I appreciated her attempt to make me feel better, but I wasn’t convinced.
When I went out for my turn, I was a little rushed because I had to potty her and get us down the stadium field through the one gate. I got there in time, but I thought I would hear a whistle to go in, but this judge only did this Vana White impression, causing me to ask him go now? Ok to go now?? Which made Cheetah do guess what …..go NOW! I was not in position, I had not lead out, and SHIT she was going NOW!! So I spend the entire run contemplating whether I should have stopped her, not let her run…would this now become a habit?? Crap this course is hard, I should get my head together.
this is Cheetah leaving with out me...I am supposed to be infront of that jump BEFORE she started!
I managed to handle her sort of (not very smoothly to say the least) from the rear until the weave entry. I did not get ahead enough ever to cue the collection need by decelerating, I was still running! So she took the off course jump, then made a beautiful entry. She did well on the tunnel discrimination which was very similar to the one missed at tryouts, so I was pleased with that.
Here she is nicely reading the rear cross - a place I spent the whole run.
Between my runs, I decided that maybe if I ate breakfast and had some real coffee, that would make me feel better. It didn’t. I went back to the room and rested a bit. I even took a Pepto-Bismol, but that only proceeded to make me puke within 10 min of taking it, which was about 20 min before my second run.
The second run was set in a swampland by the time we got to it at 11:30. There was a horrific weave pole entry that was at a 45 degree angle out from a straight tunnel with an a-frame about 2 feet (maybe) from the weave entry but the a-frame is a dead on approach. They loved straight tunnels at this EO! She missed the weave entry which I forgot to mention was in 6 inches of mud because so many dogs had slid out trying to stop themselves from slamming into the a-frame. Cheetah missed the weave entry, I thought that standing in the middle of the exit of the tunnel, she would have to collect…wouldn’t she? Apparently not! After the Dogwalk, she took the off course jump and then I missed a 270 and went from the tunnel to the teeter…did I mention that I had just thrown up about 30 minutes ago? Oh well two runs, two E’s – tomorrows another day! I went back to the room to lie down.
Look at the mud on her feet going over the viaduct!
It's a good thing she loves to weave! What you cant' see is how close the Aframe is to the beginning of the weaves.
Toni wanted to know if there was anything she could bring me and suggested a coke. I don’t normally like coke, but it has helped me in the past with an upset stomach. That was the wrong move – as soon as I drank it, within 10 seconds, I needed to get rid of it. So I continued to lay in bed and miss the rest of the regular rounds. Toni came back and told me that they had closed the standard ring for “obvious reasons” to add sand to it. That took about 2 hours for them to fix it enough to finish running the large dogs on it.
I was feeling well enough by the end of the day to sit in a chair and look out of the window and watch the end of the small finals and the medium finals. They postponed the large individual finals until tomorrow.
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