We arrived early as usual. I got the dogs settled, maps collected, and set down to study maps. They were doing general briefing, as well as High in Group awards. I was sitting at my crate set-up only half listening. Suddenly my friend Beth comes over and says, "Why are you sitting here? You have a ribbon!" When I walked over, it turns out we had taken High in Working Group yesterday! Wow! Awesome! Funny enough, our only other HIT Group was last year at this same show. We got an awesome ribbon for it.
Needless to say I'm thrilled, and it was totally unexpected.
Excellent B Standard
After waiting around through FAST. We were up for Standard.
This course was nice and flowing, with a few challenges. When walking this course, there were only a few places where I considered a couple options. The front cross after the 180 and before the teeter was a no brainer. Between the A-frame and the chute I walked it with both a front cross after the A-frame or a rear cross before the chute. In the end a front cross won out, as I don't like rear crossing the chute. The dogs don't know where you are when they come out, and unlike a tunnel, if you call them while they are in the chute they can get tangled. The other area where there were options was the 14-15-16 sequence. I walked it with both a front cross between 14-15 and a front cross between 15-tunnel. We ended up doing the front cross between 14-15 and it worked well for us, I think the other option would have been fine as well. Either way, we had an awesome run! We Q'd, giving us our 6th MX leg and 17 MACH points.
Video of our run:
Excellent B Jumpers with Weaves
I was pretty stoked after our Standard run, and we only had to wait an hour and a half to run Jumpers. I was REALLY hoping to break our Jumpers curse.
This course was pretty complex. I walked it with a front cross between 2-3, another between 6-7, another between 9-10. My areas of concern were 13-14, where the tunnel was a definite off-course option, 15-16 because outside weave entries are NOT HP's favorite, and 19-20 where again the tunnel is an off course option. I chose to threadle 13-14, as well as 19-20 to really pull HP in and get his focus on me so he wouldn't take the tunnel. For the weaves challenge, I allowed HP to run out straight towards the wall until his body was in line with the weaves, then pull him in and tell him to weave so that he wouldn't miss his entry. I watched several dogs before us get a lot of off course tunnel suck, so I was worried. Turns out I didn't need to be. WE ACTUALLY Q'd!!!!! He ran great, was totally focused, read my crosses and threadles really well. We got our first MXJ leg and 5 MACH points. Yay!!!!! After our run, my former instructor (we changed due to a move) stopped me to tell me what a great job I'd done handling the course. Since she is not the type to be over-effusive with praise, I was thrilled!
Video of our run:
So we now have our first QQ, and added 22 MACH points to our total today! AND a HIT working group!!!! Woot woot!
By the end of the day I had two very tired boxers. :)
MACH totals: 70/750 points and 1 double Q
That Standard course was really nice! The JWW course mostly looked tricky because the damn thing was jammed into the center of the ring!
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