Can I Bring the Dog?

We’re doing our best to stay cool and relaxed, but it’s late in the day and we’ve had only one trip to the ring together.  I worked the first class of the day and could hear Chico barking pretty much the whole time. He’s had a Reiki treatment and a couple naps, but he seems exhausted and is pretty unwilling to enter his crate, pen, or pop up dog house. Which he needs to do twice more this afternoon if I want to walk the two remaining courses we’ll face.
Or I could go get a Trapp Family lager from the keg, relax with my dog, and run without walking.  At this point in the weekend,  that seems to be a reasonable plan.
My partner for team was asked to run with another dog that needed a teammate,  a dog with better prospects for qualifying than we have, and I released her from our “bond.” The trial secretary asked me my goals and I said I was happy to run the courses as best as we could, on our own, and let Cheryl have a better chance of sucess. So I get to have fun with Chico,  Cheryl gets to have a more suitable partner,  everybody wins.
Bow, if we have some great weaves, I can yell “cookies!!” and run out of the ring without letting anyone down.

Chico is zonked out in the shade next to me. We did two full courses and a short course, he waited in his little pop up dog house, where he could see me, while I volunteered, he played a little with Jed. On a warm humid day a guy can get all used up by 2 PM.

This is our campsite for the weekend.

Chico and I are at the Von Trapp Family Lodge, playing agility and camping for the weekend, and boy-oh-boy do they have a sweet spot here.
Power supplies are a bit uncertain,  but I’ll used the various devices I have to capture as many images as I am able.

As a not-super-competitive person, I tend not to learn all the rules of the games we play in agility. I just kind of go out there and do my best and see what happens. Not long on strategy, just playing with my dog. This year I decided that I wanted to take Chico to Cynosport – the USDAA nationals. I read the rules of the tournament game that Julie advised, Performance Speed Jumping, and it said that you need two qualifying runs to enter the quarter finals at Cynosport. We go those, so I was ready to go.

Then, over the weekend, I read some more rules. It turns out you have to meet the eligibility standards in TWO tournament games to go to Cynosport.

We’re trying another tournament game, Performance Versatility Pairs, at NOMAD in mid-month, but it is a series of five classes in which Chico and I AND our partner team, Cheryl and Whitney, have to do well in all of them to earn eligibility. Chico and I haven’t even been able to do a whole course lately, let alone run clean and get Qs. All we can do is our best. And me worrying about it is NOT going to help.

Bye-bye Cynosport plans, hello “let’s make Chico happy and relaxed so he can run at all.”

We had a very interesting time in the ring yesterday. Moments of brilliance and moments of “WTF was that?” So sslllloooowwwww off the start line, getting faster and better during the runs. Kinda. Mostly. Three times at the weaves; first time Chico said “Weaves? I don’t see any weaves,” both the first and second time I asked him to weave, so we went on. Second and third times, he got a correct entry the first time, his speed built as he moved through them. But then there was an A-frame he couldn’t do and he just quit on me for ten seconds (seemed like a minute) and then he came back to me and finished rather well. He absolutely didn’t have a whole course in him. At the end of the day I was lingering for scores and the judge (Becky Dean from Seattle, Wa – nice lady, designed us some fun courses) walked by and looked down at Chico, smiled, shook her head, and said in a sort of indulgent parent tone of voice, “You’re a silly guy.”

I spent a lot of the drive home trying to figure out what my dog was telling me and I wonder if it is that to him, the start line at a trial looks like Monday morning. There must be a way to train that will make him think otherwise. We can work on that.

My guy did so well with other dogs all day. Jed, and that cattle dog, and the amazing Charlie (Charlie’s human is my inspiration – she’s 76 and still running a dog) – Chico got along with all of them, nose to nose and nose to tail. And he wanted to play with Jed. And the judge did notice us. Maybe not for our speed and power and control, but we stood out.

Now to take all the cardboard from the windows that have finally been installed at the house to the transfer station. And hope the rain they advertise does show up.

Chico and I are at a trial right now, we’ve had two runs one fair one much better,  but exciting is that we had a great out of the ring, inter-dog experience during this morning’s general briefing. Chico was sweet with Sandy Cody’s dog Jed.
And later, again, he was normal-friendly with a little cattle dog.
Oh, and we did one very nice set of weave poles in Gamblers.
And the day is only half over.