First class was snooker. Start line felt a little shaky - that start line will never be totally fixed but it is getting better. Did a 1-6, 1 and "tweet" Blaze took 6a really long and I sent him over 7a instead of 6b by mistake as I was disorientated. Big 8 points.
Standard - didn't Q but was happy with the run.
Grand Prix next. Had a few spots that were tricky and required thought to figure out the handling. I had worked on some 270's the week before and knew that if I didn't go in deep, Blaze would pull through the gap. We were about 1/3 of the way down in the run order so I got to watch some of the 22" dogs and saw where there were a few trouble spots.
Good stay at the start, kept the first few bars up. Came out of the chute - it was up hill there and I was a little behind - off course jump on left, off course weaves on right, correct jump in middle. Blaze came out of the chute and started to veer towards me - oh no! Told him to go on, jump. I had set a good line of motion going into the chute, so he took the correct jump and kept it up!
Decelerate to indicate turn after tire, he turned and was a little wide towards the off course dogwalk. Redirected to far end of tunnel. Picked him up and off to the dogwalk. Then the next tricky bit - jump after dogwalk, but show collection or we were buying the aframe. Phew, that worked with right arm up, name, jump, back up past plane of aframe, rotate and hope next jump was there - yes! Again, don't show extension, send to tunnel.
Took a step backwards, got him coming out, the stepped towards jump while facing to the left. Read it perfectly, didn't even see his beloved weaves and went straight towards the teeter! Can't say there was much of a wait for release there :-), but we aren't working on that - yet:-)
Into the 270 - step into the pocket, tell him out jump, start moving to aframe when he is committed. Step away from aframe to the left when he is at bottom as some dogs had taken the off course jump straight ahead. Oh god, please don't knock the bar! Weave (please don't pop out at 10!), jump, jump, done and CLEAN.
That was how I always want to do agility - running with the dog and us being in synch. Couldn't believe we were clean for a Q! Went back to check that it was still a Q a while later - and found out that we took first for the Bye!! There were lots of good dogs after us, so I never thought a Bye was possible - but there it was!
Now he gets to have 2 additional runs at the NE Regional. As I am secretary for that, he will be there anyway.
Still makes me grin when I think of that run a week later :-)
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