Dogbird Daily: March CPE Trial @ 3D Dog Training

Big post coming here! Molly, Perri and I did three days of agility trialing with 3D this past weekend, whew! Of course nobody was entered in all 12 runs...that's way to exhausting for all of us.

Molly and I started on Friday morning with two toy runs in UKI. I have been re-training a stopped dogwalk because I need some type of dogwalk behavior rather than luck. She's been doing well at home but I wanted to support that in a trial environment. We started with Standard and she was pretty keyed up and the dogwalk was the second obstacle. She held her start line stay! (which I was also prepared to work on because we have been having some issues.), flew over the first jump and went flying down the dogwalk. I said "Spot" calmly and that dog walked to the end of the down ramp and stopped cleanly and looked at me with her tail wagging. She had no idea I had a toy! I almost fell over! It wasn't a 2o/2o but then, she still has trouble doing a 2o/2o in class, but she will stop on the downramp in class. SO! WOW! Major tug and play jackpot in the ring for Molly there!

Other than that we worked on her weave poles and she did pretty well. Didn't nail her entry and run through the fast but hey, that's why we were doing a toy run.
Jumping was really fun and we were totally flying on the Beginner course, it felt so great! The weaves were once again the sad part of the run but I asked her to do them again and got some nice results.

After that we took a break from the trial, we had a few hours until that evening's CPE trial.

Fullhouse was first and both Molly and Perri had some smoking fast runs with Molly breaking her Fullhouse personal best by earning 42 points, and Perri close on her heels with 41 points!

Standard was Molly only and full of tunnel/dog walk discriminations. And she again stopped dead on the dogwalk and let me front cross at the down ramp! Who is this dog?! I was so proud of my girl, we got all those tricky bits only to be NQd by the weave poles. :( They were split into two 6 pole sections and Molly was worse than usual on the first section...and also worse than usual on the second section. It was a real bummer, but not the first time we have NQd simply because of weave poles. Unfortunately. Regardless of the NQ, again we have had many, I was thrilled to death that we navigated the tough parts and laughing at Molly's "air A-frame" at the end. Flying completely over the apex with rear legs kicked straight back only to land a stride in on the contact zone where it belongs. Yea!

Saturday started with Jackpot and Molly. It was a traditional, which I love! Collect points, do the bonus. The Gamble was in two separate strips, the first was a tunnel to jump send. Nailed it. The next was 6 weaves to a backside jump send. Did not nail it, haha! We did get the weaves and I wish I had run her out of the ring for a party for doing so but instead I tried for the final jump. She didn't understand due to my position and took the front side of the jump. Oh well!

Standard was next with Molly. It was a way smoother Standard course in comparison to the prior day's, we only had one almost-off course scare but Molly called off of it ... did her weaves. Ran her Aframe and stopped on the dog walk again. Even with it being the second to last obstacle! 8th Standard Q!

Then the day shifted to Poodle Time for Wildcard. This is Perri's only run I don't have a video for and it was her best one! She was fast and following me well, she entered her weave poles independently and stayed in them and we earned our last Q towards our CL3-H title! We have been having some confidence issues on the weave poles, so it was nice to see that.

Jumpers was next , the video comes in just missing my overhandling her away from the wrong tunnel end...and pulling her all the way around the correct one! Didn't I just blow an Open Standard run for doing that? I put it on my mental list for the rest of the trial: Start Trusting the Poodle. The run was smooth except for me not decel'ing enough on the 180 but we still qualified since refusals aren't counted. First Level 4 Jumpers Q!

Snooker was last of the day and it is the last class that we are still in Level 3 for. Right before Perri's run a black lab left the ring through the entrance gate and ran right past Perri and started sniffing the floor and barking. This shook Perri up quite a bit. She was afraid and started barking back. She was shut down. I should have run her off the start line but I really needed to lead out a bit. She got stuck on her start line, then she walked past the correct jump...then she would not take the jump. This run isn't pretty but it was beautiful to me because my girl bounced back from a shut down at a trial as fast as I have ever seen her do. This was one of my favorite moments of the trial! And we did manage to get 32 points and qualify. I was glad that I persisted and encouraged Perri to do the run and the obstacles, I almost had my own shut down and felt like I should have let Perri leave the ring and not do the run...felt like I was asking too much. It's hard to know what the Right Thing is but I think working Perri through this run was the Right Thing this time.

Sunday started off with Snooker again. I had a bit of Q Brain (sigh) because Perri could finish Level 3 if we earned this final Snooker Q. We were 2 or 3 points shy of a qualifying score. Perri ran out her third jump and the two of us got progressivly sillier and more flustered as the run went along. I have a very hard time thinking straight when I start fretting that Perri is going to get wild on me and things keep going wrong! So, Level 3 completion will have to wait for another day :)

Jumpers was next and aside from a jump run out on the third jump we had a lovely run and our second Level 4 Jumpers Q.

Perri's last run of the trial was her first Level 4 Colors Q. I wasn't very solid on my decision of how to handle the first jump to tunnel and Perri went for the wrong end but stopped for me before she scored a wrong course.

Jackpot was next with Molly. This was a long trial day and Molly had been hanging out for quite a while without getting to do anything! I took her on a long walk to warm her muscles up before taking her into the ring. This Jackpot was non traditional, there were three taped off boxes. You had to handle any three obstacles from inside of that box and you would earn the bonus points assigned to the box. The first box you see us do is worth 15 points, and the box in the back near the end was worth 20. We did not attempt the 25 point box because it would have necessitated doing distances weaves, Aframe and very very far away jumps. My girl has a great future as a good distance dog, but we aren't there yet! We qualified with 61 points , we needed 44!

Standard was next. I was really nervous. Molly broke her start line stay and pulled into my position when she came off the teeter since I was behind, and then took that forward motion towards the wrong end of the tunnel. I had planned to be up further and push her easily into the correct end, didn't happen! She almost went into the wrong end of the tunnel and I called her off of it rather forcefully, bad! Molly blows some stress off after the spread jump coming off the Aframe, a classic Molly loop of free running ... and I deserved that after my harsh tunnel call off. I got her back before anything detrimental happened though, but I was totally out of position for our next line. I was flustered and didn't support the tunnel to dogwalk as much as I needed to and she came around the dog walk ramp and almost went into an off course tunnel. This time my call off was more of a miserable wail because I thought for sure she was going into the tunnel. But...she didn't! She stopped and looked at me. We finished the rest of the course well enough. It wasn't pretty and I swear the SPCA was notified to come take my poor emotionally abused dog from me but I have to stop being so hard on myself. I am trying very hard to manage my stress and emotions in the ring but it really does take time, it's a process! In any case Molly was super happy coming out of the ring and I gave her our last three meatballs (yes, three!) for putting up with my crap and for being a good girl. She also doesn't seem to have any ill effects from the slip that she had coming into the second jump of the 180, ugh.