Chico and I came down to Eva’s for the weekend. For the second year in a row, we’re competing in the Cape Cod Kennel Club’s agility trial. It takes place about an hour’s drive from Eva’s farm, and it makes a nice opportunity for a visit.

I entered the trial on Friday and Sunday, giving us day off to hang out with Eva. On Friday, I got my timing completely wrong, arriving about 3 1/2 hours before we ran. That gave me lots of time to volunteer, but also gave Chico a lot of time to get bored and antsy. Then, our two classes happened almost on top of each other, and I was frazzled to start with. It was our first time competing at the Excellent level in the Jumpers class, and I suppose I was a bit nervous, and the course was hard to learn and hard to run. No, really, people there who regularly compete at Excellent level told me that it was a challenging course.

The course is different every time we compete. On arrival at the trial, I pick up the course map and have a chance to review it until the course is actually constructed (right before the class). Then all the competitors in that class get eight minutes to walk the course (without their dogs); after that, you get one shot at it and that’s your run.

The short of it is that while we had fun, we didn’t have any qualifying runs, in fact, we had runs that some folks refer to as “eye chart” runs – so many faults that there’s hardly room for the scribe to write them all down on the score sheet.

Like these.

But I always tell Chico he won the class, and we always have an ice cream, so we did those things.

On the way home, we stopped at the Falmouth Dog Park, where Chico had a chance to socialize, through the fence between the large and small dog sections of the park, with a pair of Shelties on their way home from the trial.

Because the dog park was, well, a dog park, we stopped at some conservation lands near Eva’s on the way home.

Look, that sign directs dog owners to do what most of us do, no matter what the rules say. Keep the dog under control, carry a leash. Simple. I like it when the rules are reasonable.

This is what Chico wants from an outing – a chance to get out an explore things at his own pace.

All in all it was great day. And we’ll be going back to take a shot at whatever the judges cn throw at us on Sunday.