Wednesday, March 20, 2013

Pennsylvania Trial, Day 2

Masters Jumpers:

Lexi:  Never did I imagine that I would have a dog that would have a harder time with Jumpers than Standard.  In fact, I usually like Standard because it feels "easier".  I feel like in Standard a lot of time the challenges are equipment-based, whereas the challenges in Jumpers are handling-based.  Lexi has decent equipment skills, so typically that isn't the issue.

Anyways, we have only 1 Masters Jumpers Q, from January 2012!  I mean, she did have 6 months off during that time period, but still...clearly a weakness of ours.

But that makes the Qs all the much sweeter!  This was a really nice run.  Of course there are always things to work on, but we held our own.  If you watch, she wanted so bad to cut behind me on the serpentine recall to heel, but I held my ground and she came around.  Woohoo.  And then coming out of the tunnel she almost didn't grab the jump in front of her, but noticed it last minute and went out and grabbed it, saving my butt!  I was most concerned about the turn at jump 11 because I knew I would have to trust her and leave her. I could have trusted her and left sooner, but I did trust her and moved downstream, and it was great :) We had the 4th fastest time of every dog at the trial!



Bentley:  And Bentley had an amazing run!  He was only a couple seconds behind Lexi (which is really MOVING for him), and had a great run.  He and Jonathan were definitely on the same wave length, and Jonathan's crosses were really pretty!



Masters Snooker:

Lexi:  One of her strengths is her speed--not so much her collection :) so it's a great benefit that we can lead out really far and not lose much time.  The opening of this run is a great example.  In fact, the entire opening was really super!  Then Jonathan didn't work the weave entry, and she didn't know that's where they were going since he'd been pulling her off of things the entire run.



Bentley: Not much to say!  Jonathan concentrated so much on Lexi's plan that he didn't leave much time to plan for Bentley.  Bentley doesn't have an a-frame contact, so clearly the a-frame wasn't the plan, but he wasn't clear enough.



Masters Standard:
Lexi: There were a few bobbles (and the video cuts out for just a second), but how adorable was it when one of Lexi's back legs slipped off the dogwalk and she put it back on? Baby girl knows her criteria!





Steeplechase Finals:
Yay Bentley!  He came in first in finals and we got a little bit of $$--always a perk!  Not sure what happened at the weaves or afterwards--I think he was just tired.





4 comments:

  1. Lexi and Bentley look very good! Loved the Jumpers runs for both of them..lovely! So smooth and fast. We are working on getting the smooth part down. Way to go:-)

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  2. Very nice runs!! Things came together so nicely!

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  3. Loved the Jumpers runs, they were great. That looks like such a nice facility. Is it a dedicated agility venue?

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    1. Yes, it's a privately owned agility facility. It was terrific! It was a little farther than we like to go for a weekend (4 hours) but it was so nice that I would go out of my way to go again.

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