Well, it's over. Our very first NADAC agility trial. Purple Q ribbons made their way into most of our hands before the weekend was over. The only exceptions were Abby and our 'baby dogs' — Switch and Betty — and we're sure that before long, they too will have some lovely ribbons to decorate their crates. Hopefully so too will Abby at some point. She may not be one of our youngest dogs, but she's certainly the one who needs most to work on her focus!
Zack had his good moments and his bad moments on Sunday, but in the end pulled out two Qs (and two first-place finishes) in the two Tunnellers runs. His first Tunnellers run was pretty much a slam-dunk. He ran it without any missteps at all. The only question was what the course time was and whether he was under it. He was under it by about 7 seconds, I think. Or was it 5? I can't remember. I'll have to await the ScallyWaggs follow-up email with the results to refresh my memory. (It turns out he was 8 seconds under.) His second run, I was reasonably sure that he hadn't Q'ed, as he'd had to backtrack to one tunnel, and he had pondered the entrance to another tunnel out of sequence — which had led to a heart-stopping, suspenseful moment for me, him and the crowd as he pondered his options with his front paws just short of the tunnel entry. Then he whirled around and headed for the correct tunnel. I thought he had probably taken too much time, but he hadn't (Well, he almost did; official results said that the course time was 54.60 seconds; Zack's time was 53.89. That was a squeaker!).
Abby was, well, Abby. I ended up scratching her out of two of her planned runs as she was still exhibiting the attention span of a gnat. And like yesterday, she didn't get a Q, but she did get another P (as in peeing on the course). Most of the time, Abby was just in la-la land. She'd complete a few obstacles and then la, la, la, off she'd wander. The judge would always return my little apologetic grin whenever we got ready to start a run. "This is Abby, " I'd say, and Janet the judge would just nod and grin and we both knew how it was going to end....
Alas, it did indeed rain today. Not a downpour, but several hours of light rain with the occasional cloudy break. The saving grace was that it wasn't windy and all things considered, wasn't that cold. I did put my new propane heater to the test, however. I had it trained on the crate Abby and Zack were in, but you could feel the warmth radiating out to surrounding tootsies in a very pleasant fashion. And that was with it set on Low. So it definitely seems to have been a good investment — and a necessity if we're going to continue to go to trials in the winter and shoulder seasons.
It wasn't the best day for photography, so I really didn't take many pictures. However, Brianna took over my camera for a couple of runs to try and get a couple of shots of Abby and Zack on the course.
Zack on the dogwalk.
Abby on the dogwalk (before she went a-wandering).
A professional photographer caught this one of Abby actually completing an obstacle....
Many thanks to Eric and Petra and all the other good folks at ScallyWaggs for being such warm, receptive and helpful hosts. We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves!
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