Secret's 5th Trial!

I actually had to look back to see which trial this was for Secret. It is hard to believe it is number five. For some reason it feels like we've been doing it longer, but I guess five trials since the end of February is actually pretty good. lol

As you can see, Secret had a good day! We got up at 4:30 a.m. and made the drive up to Lindstrom, MN. I was ever so thankful that they decided to push the start time back to a more respectable 9 a.m. vs. 8:00. I don't think I would have been able to get up any earlier and still function. I made Secret ride in the back on the way up there so that she would actually sleep.

Because this is what she looks like when she tries to sleep up front and the end result is that she doesn't sleep well (this was the drive home):

So we arrived at Oasis Equestrian Center at about 8:22 a.m. -- Pretty much leaving me just enough time to get stuff set up and to potty the boys. Secret, being the girl she is, refuses to potty quickly, so she had to wait until after the boys finished running Elite Regular. Thankfully we did have plenty of time for her to find the perfect spot before going in to run Open Regular.

I'm very happy with how Secret ran this weekend! I was even happier after watching the video because while running, it felt like she wasn't moving that fast, but on video she's actually looking pretty awesome. We had an interesting development with contacts, though -- Secret more or less lost her two-on/two-off on the dog walk, and even did a four-on at the a-frame once! I would stand there and wait for her to get into position and she would just stand there and bark at me, so eventually I just had to say fine and keep going. We need to get the contacts out at home to revisit this, I guess. Truth be told, though, I think it's almost a miracle that her contacts held up all winter with zero training.

Secret Q'd and got first in the first round of Regular. The second round was great right up until the end when she dove into the off course tunnel under the dog walk. Uh, Secret, did we forget what an RFP is? Again, lack of training.... She Q'd and got 3rd in Touch-n-Go coming in a good 8 seconds under time, so that's fantastic. Chances was an NQ all thanks to me calling her name right before the jump and causing her to cut to the inside. It happened on the other side of the line, so there was no opportunity to fix it.

I was surprised to see that Secret came in 6 seconds under time in Open Weavers considering we had to fix a spot when she cut in on the inside of a hoop and she got progressively slower (coming almost to a stop at the end) in the last set of (12) poles. Who knows what was going on in her head there, but thankfully she was covering enough ground earlier in the course to make up for it. Oh, and if you watch the video, take a gander at the blind cross I threw at her. No idea where that came from. I do blind crosses when the dogs are in tunnels, but never out in the open like that. I did it to Kaiser, too (but not Luke). I blame it on my lack of sleep. Thankfully it worked in both cases. Maybe we should train for something like that in case my brain blows up again in the future.

Open Jumpers was Secret's final and 6th run of the day. Thus far she's never done more than 5 runs in a day and I didn't know if it would be too much for her -- But darn it, that extra run was only $5 more, so all three dogs ran 6 runs this time. There was a long straight line of jumps that went straight into a serpentine with a VERY tempting off course jump at the end. I knew I wanted to get in a front cross with Secret since she doesn't yet send terribly well on the rear crosses and I didn't want to be behind her. I left her at the start and did a running wait, which seemed to jazz her up. I released her when I got to jump three and came nicely down the line and read my front cross cue nicely.

(I stole this photo off my friend, Robyn's, blog -- Thanks, Robyn!)

I ran Secret in Proficient at this trial, so she was in the 20"+ category. I feel that she handled it very well, but I could tell that her back was starting to get tight by the end of the day. She carries all of her stress in her back. I'm trying to make more of a point to massage her regularly. I also put liniment on her Friday & Saturday and that seems to help. I think it's something that I'm just going to have to get in the habit of doing or I'll end up with two crippled dogs on my hands (I shouldn't say that, Luke is well managed these days).

For whatever reason, YouTube isn't giving me an embedding option right now. So here's the Facebook version instead!



In other exciting news, Luke got his NATCH 2 on a lovely Chances run!



And now I am sad because we have no more trials until Memorial Day weekend.

And JUST IN CASE you were wondering, this is the annual Hawaiian Shirt trial. :o) That should explain my choice in attire. lol