Trial! New Titles!

Look at those pretty green ribbons! Secret finished up two more titles at our trial this weekend! The first was her O-EAC on Saturday, which means TWENTY Q's in Elite Regular already! Wow!! Then, miracle of miracles, we managed another Elite Chances Q on Sunday for her ECC title. Do you know what that means? It means the countdown to NATCH is now official. Go figure. :o)

Secret Q'd in 5/9 runs this weekend and I have to pretty much take the blame for the NQ's (except maybe in Chances on Saturday, she kind of blew me off to take a tunnel). I had major puppy brain going on and was pretty distracted, which led to some pretty pathetic handling at times. Considering that, I think the five Q's we did get are pretty remarkable. lol

Overall I was pretty happy with her speed. Her enthusiasm in the Regular rounds was great pretty much everywhere except the weaves. Round 1 on Saturday was great because it ended with the weaves -- But that meant that Round 2 started with the weaves and that is the worst set-up for her. She got past it and did the rest of the course with good speed, but the weaves were pretty pathetic. I have got to find a way to increase her drive on weave poles in a trial setting....

Amazingly enough, though, she made time by FOUR SECONDS in Elite Weavers! I have avoided entering it for quite a while because I just didn't think there would be any point. She weaved the first two sets quite nicely, but the third set was fairly slow -- Likely due to me having to pull her off a tunnel right before the last set, and any time she questions me it slows her down. I didn't look to see what the 20" dog times were, but I'm sure it would have been pretty close. That's a bonus to running Skilled, I guess, in that it does give a little extra time where we need it.

Jumpers on Saturday was really lovely! I wasn't sure what to expect since it was her fifth run of the day, but she ended up with a really good time and was only about 0.4 seconds behind Luke. Unfortunately I completely and totally failed her on Sunday with Jumpers being the first run of the day. I didn't support her lines AT ALL and she did the expected and followed where I was telling her to go. I didn't correct it because I knew immediately it was my fault, so we missed several jumps. Then out of the blue I threw a blind cross at her in the last sequence, but it turned out really well so I guess it worked. :o)

I didn't think we had a shot at the Chances course because it involved layering a jump & tunnel after the a-frame, and typically one needs a bit of momentum to get that sort of thing. Secret was a GOOD girl. She looked at the inner jump, but directed right out when I told her. It was a nice run!

She put in two nice Regular rounds at the end of the day, but I pushed her wide and more or less sent her straight into the tunnel under the a-frame on the stretch home -- no point in correcting it, so we finished on that. I managed to not screw her up in the last round, so we did get a Q there -- so just two more Q's until her NATCH points in that class. Go baby dog!

Here's Secret's video -- The boys have videos on YouTube as well if you're interested. :o) Luke and I only got one of our two needed Chances Q's for NATCH 3, so that video will have to wait a bit longer! But Kaiser got one Chances, so that video is one step closer. Yay!