Sunday, November 8, 2015

Don't Burn the Day Away

It's been a while since Molly and I have had a full NQ day in CPE Agility.  We were about due.
Yesterday was a Jackpot run totally high on reactivity stress (a relentlessly barking aussie ran before us and it was more than Molly could handle first thing of the day.)  The crowd and judge were all laughing at Molly's complete insanity and total disregard of my presence in the ring.

Two rounds of Standard.  The first round is in this video (reverse spin fail = discrimination fail and off course.)   The second round had the dogwalk as the second to last obstacle which I always hate...and she did a spectacular fly off to end her run with.   Sigh.


Colors and Snooker were trainwrecks.  She took a rare bar down in Colors, popped the weaves and did an off course tunnel and then disconnected and was just running around like a nut.  Snooker we got whistled off before we even got our second Red.

Last night when I stepped on the line for Snooker I truly did think to myself, "At least we have this.  We are on this line together.   She can run and she is sound and she is trying her hardest and we are on this line together."    And then we NQd in like 3 seconds, but hey!  We made it onto the line!

So.   We've had better days!

This morning on the drive to the trial site I was trying to have a positive outlook, and I had one of my Dave Matthews Band CDs playing for the millionth time.  Pig came on and my take on that song is that it is about being grateful for all the things that are good in life and not wanting to rush each day by in anticipation of a new day, but to enjoy the one that is here.



I brought the Good Dog on Sunday and we were starting with Jackpot which is our game and I wasn't letting the black cloud of Saturday get me down.  "There are bad times, but that's okay.  Just look for the love in it, don't burn the day away."

We were blessed with a course that we could blast to the back of the ring (which Molly loves) and then to the A-frame which Molly flew off.  Thankfully in Jackpot you can continue doing the A-frame, so we did it two more times with nice striding running frames, collected our points.   Did our closing and qualified with 55 points.

Standard was next with all good Molly-things set upwise.  The dogwalk was second and pointing to the back of the room.  The A-frame was also pointing away from ringside/people.  No contacts blown, no wrong courses...we got a precious Standard Q!

I did not enter the last two classes of the day, so we went hiking at French Creek State Park.  We walked at least three miles with some elevation gain and rocks.  We found two geocaches.  We found some Batman sunglasses dropped on the trail.  Molly was mostly good on the leash except one abrupt yank when we were navigating a boulder field - I'm pretty sure she misaligned my thoracic spine with that one!  We got back to the car just as things were getting dim for the evening.

Weekend off to a rough start but we ended it with a lovely trial day and lovely weather for a walk in the woods.


"Come sister, my brother.  Shake up your bones, shake up your feet."
-Pig, Dave Matthews Band.

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