Prepping for Champs - Coursework

Wow, just look at that excitement! That unbridled enthusiasm that just seeps from Secret's pores!!

Because I'm so ungodly out of shape and it was a warmer day yesterday, I took a short break between running each of the dogs through the course last night. Secret was not happy about waiting her turn. She's not very patient, you know. It was good for her, though, and I was happy that she came out ready to play for both of her turns.

Behold! My super amazing course drawing skills!!

I have come to realize that, sadly, courses from NADAC Championships are next to impossible to find. Occasionally you may luck out and find schmucks like me that drew them up themselves and posted it on a blog (I did find one such course, but my dog walk was on the wrong side of the yard for it). So basically, I broke down and decided to draw up my own courses from studying various YouTube videos. The above course is Round 1 from last year.

Since my yard is not a bazillion' x gazillion' in dimensions, I did have to compress the course more so than what was actually at Champs -- Which sadly means that I would be even more winded and ready to die than I was last night upon completion of said course. lol And this wasn't even a long one!! But all told, this course actually fit fairly nicely into my yard. The only alterations I made was to substitute a hoop for the #10 tunnel (I only have two tunnels and they were kind of required under the contacts!) and to finish with the tire instead of a tunnel (same reason).

Secret did really great! The out discrimination was more or less identical to our exercises of the other night, so she managed to nail it each time -- Granted, my distance was not quite as far as seen at the actual Championships considering the "squishiness" of my course, but it was still a discrimination at a pretty good distance

The only real surprise was when she shot past me over jump 15 and took the off course #19 jump instead of taking the tunnel. Never take tunnel sucking for granted, I guess!

We worked on the weaves for a bit when we were done. I focused on trying to keep her speed up, but we also worked on independence and I shot off laterally as seen in what I believe is Round 2 of Champs (which I will get to at a later date -- the dog walk is on the opposite side). She can handle it at home, but at a trial? Guess I will have to test her one of these days!

After a hard night of training, following a good long walk (for me!). For some reason, I never tire of these pictures. She just cracks me up.