One step forward ... two steps back

Stephen and Sky started with Excellent FAST.  There was an A-Frame in the send so Stephen decided not to risk attempting it from a distance, instead they ran the course like  regular STD.  Sky did OK, he did the send sequence correctly with Stephen on the dog side of the tape.  Sky also made all his contacts and they were under the course time.  Stephen thinks they might have Q'ed on this course if they had attempted the send but he didn't want to risk Sky launching himself off the A-frame again.

Next was Open Jumpers.  This was a very quick course with lots of "off-course" possibilities.  Sky was absolutely flying and completed all the tricky stuff perfectly, unfortunately he clipped a bar just before he entered the weaves.  Stephen is pretty sure he did this because he called out "weave" whilst Sky was still airborne.  Stephen thinks that he should stop talking to Sky while he's running as he doesn't need many verbal cues these days.  Sky would have been the quickest dog by a big margin, he was the last dog to run in the class and as Stephen was putting the leash on Sky the judge went up to them and complement Stephen on Sky's performance which was nice.

Finally they ran Open STD.  This was a very short run.  The opening sequence was jump, dog walk, chute.  Unfortunately Sky missed his contact at the bottom of the dog walk so Stephen pulled him off the course.  


Watch this space for videos to follow ...


Next event : Sat 4/30 & Sun 5/1 PSPC Agility Trial - Argus Ranch

New Standard Novice Title!!

Stephen took the day off work and ran Sky in the Manchester Terrier agility trial.

The first run was Exc FAST.  Sky came really close to doing this correctly - the send was shoot-jump-shoot.  Sky did this but unfortunately he went in the wrong entrance to the last shoot.  Like last week hardly anyone qualified in this event.  Here is a link to the run:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWqtzF-ijFQ

Next was Open JWW.  Things were going fine until jump 11.  Stephen thinks he held his arm too far out which caused Sky to go off course.  This was an odd course, it was pretty much identical to the Excellent JWW course except they had 1 fewer jump.  Stephen thought the open course was harder because the way they removed the jump meant he and Sky had a tighter course to run.  Here is the run:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTO5OKTtbKk

Finally they ran Nov Std.  They ran clean in 40 seconds and came second.  The dog that won had the benefit of running the course twice, the first run was clean but the timer didn't work - so she got to run it again and ran much quicker.  At last Stephen and Sky are out of novice!!  Here is the run:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzHrFNTJgqE  The contacts still aren't great, they are losing so much time on them.

Another Clean Run in Novice STD .. two down one to go!

Just two runs today starting with Open JWW.  Things were going very well until 4 jumps from the end.  Stephen could tell that Sky had locked onto an off course jump and he tried to call him away from it.  Unfortunately Sky was still airborne and Stephen's calling caused him to knock the bar - to make matters worse he still did the off course jump.  With hindsight Stephen says he should not have attempted a front cross at this jump, he could easily have taken him over the jump and the next jump and then do a rear cross.  Here is a link to the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6S4bGXC54A  Note that he did a funny bunny hop over the first jump as Stephen didn't give him enough room for a full stride.

Their last run of the weekend was Novice STD.  Unfortunately Stephen doesn't have any video of this run.  Sky was really flying, he did a clean run with much better contacts (still lots of room for improvement though) he completed the course in 36 seconds the standard course time was 72 seconds!  He averaged 4.01 yards per second, he came first in his class and had the quickest time of all the dogs by a big margin - he beat all the Border Collies and the Shelties :-)

The bad news is Stepphen injured my left calf muscle again (off to the physio tomorrow) on the last run of the weekend - not as bad as before but he really could have done without another injury.

Overall it was a pretty good weekend - 3Q's and 3 1st places out of 5 runs, plus he was quickest dog both days in all of Novice STD and the 3rd quickest in all of Open JWW.  Sky is developing quite a fan club, lots of people came up to me over the weekend and wanted to know how old he was, where we got him from and where we train.

Today was Sky's best ever agility day!

Stephen & Sky had 3 runs starting with ExcA FAST.  Here the SEND was very hard, only 3 dogs made it and only 1 dog that made it actually Q'ed, so Stephen didn't feel tool bad that Sky couldn't quite pull it off.  Here's a link to his run:  http://www.youtube.com/user/ghostyboyster#p/u/3/iwRqWMBYueo  He ran the course Stephen wanted him to run, but he popped out of the weaves, not really sure why.

Next was Open JWW.  Sky did very well here, he had a clean run in 23 seconds (18 seconds under the course time) - he won his class and averaged 5.76 yards per second.  Sky was the third quickest dog in the competition beaten by two Border Collies.  Here's a link to his run: http://www.youtube.com/user/ghostyboyster#p/u/0/l2P_FkkwCzM

Finally, they ran Novice STD.  At last he had a clean run in 42 seconds - a full 25 seconds under the course time!  He won his class and was also the quickest dog in the competition, he averaged 3.4 yards per second.  Here is a link to his run: http://www.youtube.com/user/ghostyboyster#p/u/1/0GpNmN35aco  Watch him look for the rest of the poles when he completes the weaves (he's used to 12 not 6!).  Stephen doesn't think it was a great run, Sky's contacts left a lot to be desired -  but at least he made them.

Overall they did really well and I'm very proud of them both - extra rations for Sky and Kohl tonight!