We arrived early, about 7:30am. I took the dogs for a nice long walk because FAST was running first and we weren't entered in FAST. We have our Open FAST title, but HP's strength is not really distance work, and I'm focusing most of my training Standard and JWW in order to get our MACH.
I walked Lexi around for a while, so she could play with some of the puppies in attendance. We also ran into another boxer person! She had a 9 yr old that was running preferred. She thought Lexi and HP were just GORGEOUS. I'm a little biased, but of course I agree.
Standard ExB
So after picking up course maps and getting everyone settled, I sat down to see what we were in for.
Nice course. We headed over to wait for our run. While waiting, I saw a guy videoing for the local news. He started talking to me, then asked if I'd wear a microphone while I ran. I was a bit flustered, but said yes. Turns out it wasn't a problem, I forgot about it once we started running. I set HP up in a startline stay, led out to Jump #2. On the ok, he released. The first surprise was the A-frame. At the end of the A-frame I released him, and before I could head for jump #4, he headed for the chute! I yelled his name and he stopped inches from going into the chute and came back to me. Luckily, no fault so we continued on. The rest of the course was fairly smooth. We did a front cross between the weaves and jump #9, a rear cross between jump #11 and the tunnel, and one more rear cross between jumps 16 and 17. Harry Potter did a great job, we got another MX leg (#5), 4th place, and 10 MACH points. At the end of the run, the news guy came up and wanted a quick interview. Of course right after my run I looked awful but oh well. :)
Video of our standard run:
The news show we were on can be accessed here.
Jumpers with Weaves ExB
The jumpers course actually looked pretty challenging for the first half.
It was basically a figure 8 to start. I walked this a couple ways. The first one was with a front cross between #6 and #7, the second way was with a rear cross between #7 and #8. I really wanted to get the front cross in if I could, as it made the pinwheel (7-8-9) much smoother. Turns out it worked and I was able to get it in. We also front crossed between 9 and 10. At this point I was thrilled, HP was handling well, we were done with the difficult part of the course, all that was left was weaves and a quick run around the edge of the ring.
Well, it all fell apart. For some reason, HP popped at his #10 pole in the weaves. I have watched and watched the video, looking to see if I anticipated the end of the weaves, if there was any lateral movement on my part that pulled him out, but I can't find a thing. I guess I have to chalk it up to one of those things. After he popped, we were going to re-do the weaves (even though it was an NQ at that point). I called him back to the beginning and he began BACKWEAVING! ACK! I tried calling him out twice, but he was ignoring me. In an effort to get him to stop, even though I knew it would mean a whistle, I stepped across his path. He did stop and come to me, the judge blew the whistle, and we left the ring. As much as it was frustrating that he popped the weaves and it down-spiraled from there, he did do a FABULOUS job on the first and most difficult part of the course. I guess we have to take the good parts where we can get them.
Video of our JWW run (even though it's embarassing):
We still have 3 days left, so that's 3 more chances for those elusive MXJ legs and QQ's!
MACH totals: 48/750 points and 0 double Q's
Nice JWW course by Paula even with two pinwheels back-to-back. Video is marked as private... :)
ReplyDeleteCongrats on a 4th place!
Should be fixed now....
ReplyDelete