Stephen's trial report ...
I ran both dogs in the Poodle agility trial this weekend. We didn't do very well - 8 runs and no Q's.
Saturday April 30th
I ran Kohl first on ExcB STD, he didn't do too bad. Unfortunately he said "Hi" to the judge which cost 6 seconds and 5 refusal points. He went on to run the rest of the course clean but was 1 second over time. If he had not stopped to say hello to the Judge he would have Q'ed.
Next I ran Kohl in ExcA JWW but did not do very well. He popped out of the weave poles on the last pole! Jumped off course (which was my fault) and was 16 seconds over time.
Sky didn't get to run until 2:30pm - we arrived at 8:30pm which meant he was hanging around for 6 hours before running. He ran STD first and made all his contacts but he slid off the table, so no Q. He did impress the judge somewhat, as I finished my run the judge came over to me and said "what an amazing dog" - which was nice.
Sky ran JWW next it was a pretty good run, but he knocked a bar off and took an off course jump - not really sure why he did either. He was very quick and did some amazing weaves - oh well there is always tomorrow.
Sunday May 1st
Ran Kohl first again in STD and then JWW. He ran both courses perfectly but was over time in both so no Q.
I did not run Sky very well at all today. Again we had to hang around for ages before I got to run him - a 7 hour wait today! By the time we got to run he was like a coiled spring. On Std he made all his contacts including the table. For some reason he popped out of the cloth shute I put him back in but he got a refusal. After the weaves I did my front cross at completely the wrong place - I intended to do it after the next jump but for some reason I did it before. I turned around and was literally right in front of the jump, there was no way Sky could even see the jump let alone take it - so another refusal.
On JWW Sky ran very nicely - but I was late with several of my cues. We didn't qualify and I can't exactly remember why - I think we had an "off course" jump very close to the end.
So in summary Kohl ran pretty well and I had all the time in the world to get into position for my turns. Sky ran well too but I handled him really badly - the long wait before running both days didn't help. Penny will be with me next weeked so I should have some video of our runs.
