Monday, March 7, 2011

Second Trial -- Whoa.... Wow!

Wow. I don't even know what to say. Secret totally blew me away this weekend at her second NADAC trial. She qualified in 4/4 runs both days. My baby girl qualified in 8/8 runs on her first full weekend of trialing. She is amazing!

She was scared out of her mind for the first run on Saturday. Her brain blew up when she realized that there were people and dogs all around the ring. That was one nice thing about the horse arena last weekend -- The solid walls around the ring made it pretty "safe" and private for her.

The good news is that she made it around the ring in one piece and realized that nobody was going to "get her" while she was in there. We ended up with 2.4 time faults on that first run (mostly because we held our contacts, but also thanks to having to reset a couple of things) -- But because she is entered in Skilled, she ended up with a 5 pt Q because we had less than 5 faults. I despise 5 pt Q's, but we'll take it! :o)

After that she just got progressively better with each run! I crowded her in Weavers, causing her to miss her entry a couple of times, but we quickly reset and were on our way. Jumpers on Saturday was AWESOME. I over-handled as we passed through a box, but Secret wasn't too upset by it and continued on without a hitch. It was a gorgeous run!

Secret was justifiably pooped on Sunday. I was a bit concerned when she didn't really even want to come out of the car and then immediately went to hide in the back of her crate. Thankfully, we ended up starting with Regular again on Sunday, so Secret had quite a while to chill and take a nap. By the time Novice Regular was ready to start, she was feeling much better and was ready to go!

We breezed through the first round of Regular without a problem. The course flowed very nicely. I was a bit more concerned on the second round of Regular because it had a dog walk/tunnel discrimination (requiring the dog walk) and we haven't had an opportunity to really work on those for a while. She read my RFP perfectly and totally nailed it. I was so proud of her!! That run earned Secret her NAC!

Secret found the Novice Jumpers course with THREE tunnel performances a bit demotivating and broke to a trot once on course, but otherwise it was a lovely run. I find that she tends to disconnect from me a bit while in tunnels, so hopefully that is something that we can work to improve.

Our day ended with tunnelers. Secret was absolutely pooped, so I wasn't sure what to expect from her after our long weekend. Well, she woke up and she rocked it on course! I checked when results were posted and saw that she made ELITE big dog time! Not by much, but darn it, I'm proud of her. :o) I really feel like she has so much potential. That Tunnelers run was her TN-N title! Two titles in three days of trialing!

Here's our video!

2 comments:

  1. Congrats on a wonderful weekend,I don't think there are many handlers that ever have perfect weekends! She got faster and faster as the weekend went on too, how exciting!

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  2. Congrats on Secrets successes! It was clear she was having a lot of fun :) You two looked very much like a seasoned team out there! Thanks for sharing her videos!

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