December Trial

Well, the purpose of this blog was to document Bentley's dogwalk issues.  Let me just say, that things have spiraled out of control.  Bentley clearly has no idea what the criteria is on the dogwalk.  He missed every single one this past weekend.  This mistake kept him from qualifying in 3 runs--everything else was clean. It was so upsetting. We have spent more time on this skill, and it just never seems to work. 


That being said, Stuart Mah gave us some great pointers on where to go from here (I'll post again with more details)...but I'm frustrated because we're basically wasting $$$ on trial entries because we know we cannot Q (and we're reinforcing the incorrect behaviors). We are traveling to a trial in Florida next weekend, and it's too late to pull out (without losing our money). We have some serious training to do in one week.


Here are the videos, good, bad, and ugly!

Advanced Pairs--Q:

This was only a Q because our partner was so fast! The judge called Bentley's a-frame (I think he gets it, but it was not good), and Leila (the aussie) made a mistake. But Leila was fast enough to cover the faults.

Advanced Standard--Elim:

Not a good run. Instance 1 of blowing his dogwalk. Then he popped out of the weaves, twice. He rarely does this (sometimes he misses his entry, but I don't remember the last time he popped out while I was with him), and then the second time he just stood there. I was worried that he was hurt, so I pulled him out. I took a look at him, and he was fine.  Maybe just slipped and then surprised that he was no longer in the weaves.  His weaves were fine the rest of the weekend.  It was suggested that I should take him to a chiropractor, but I haven't been able to find one around here.

Masters Jumpers--NQ:

I am still beating myself up over this one. I felt like this was a really nice run. It's the only run of the weekend where I felt that I was incorporating some of the things that Stuart had taught us (like not running as passively). And then I got worried about a FC, stopped, and Bentley ran into my leg, forcing him to knock the bar. 

Masters Jumpers--NQ:

Not sure why, but Bentley knocked the double jump in this one. He's honestly not a bar knocker...weird. And then I held his attention too long on the tunnel, so he got a refusal--my fault.

Masters Snooker--Q:

Weird thing at the beginning--he went around the tunnel! So bizarre. We didn't get the Super Q by 2 points! If he had been able to get the dogwalk, he would have had it since he did all 7 point obstacles in the opening. Stupid dogwalk! Haha!

Advanced Standard--NQ:

The best part about this run--you can hear Stuart coaching me the whole time! He recommended that we ease off before the a-frame, and it worked. But there's that stupid dogwalk again!! 

Grand Prix--NQ:

Jonathan did a good job, and I was proud. Other than the dogwalk (theme of the weekend), Bentley ran clean. That's the first time that's ever happened in Grand Prix.

So the good thing is that once we can get the dogwalk down, we'll be doing great!  Bad thing is that could take awhile!