2011 Wrap-Up!

We finished up 2011 with a bang! My alarm went off at the dreadful time of 3:45 a.m. on Saturday, December 31 --- But it ended up to be worth it, as all three dogs put in a fantastic day at the Minnesota Mixed Breed Club's annual New Years Eve NADAC trial.

Unfortunately I didn't get much on video due to camera issues. Secret put in a really beautiful run in Regular 2 -- I didn't even enter anyone in Round 1 because I didn't want to be stressed out about getting there, setting up and walking the course. Secret was our only Q in that round thanks to Luke taking the tunnel under the dog walk right at the start (what is WITH him in that scenario???) and Kaiser missed his dog walk contact, but otherwise had a lovely run.

The entire time I was waiting to run the three dogs in Regular, the course walk and subsequent running of Elite Chances was going on in the other ring. Due to how my dogs were spaced out, there was just no way I could get over there for either of the split walk-throughs that they ended up having. They were going to have a third walk-through, but at that point there were only about five dogs left to run in the class -- three of which were mine. I opted to just grab Luke and run him without walking the course. It really wasn't a difficult Chances course and it played well to our strengths.

Luke did great! He earned his NATCH 3! Pretty much the entire reason for getting up at an ungodly hour to enter a single day at this trial.

They did do another walk-through following Luke's run, but I figured there wasn't much point in walking it by then. So instead I grabbed Kaiser and let him have his shot -- I was so happy to have a course without a dog walk! I picked the right day, too, because not only did the course on Sunday have a dog walk, but the course in general appeared far more difficult on the videos I was able to watch. So thanks to this nice course, Kaiser is only 5 Q's away from his first NATCH! And thanks to a kind judge, and perhaps because I happened to block the view or something, Kaiser even got another Q in Touch-n-Go!


Secret ended up with a perfect day with Q's in Jumpers & Touch-n-Go as well. Her run in TNG was pretty lack-luster at the end of a long day, but her jumpers run was quite nice. She actually managed to come in 0.39 seconds FASTER than Luke for a change! She came in 2nd of 8 in her class, so that's pretty good for her.

As I mentioned, I unfortunately didn't get much on tape due to some camera issues (it got knocked into Night Shot mode, so everything is blurry) and the crazy two-ring schedule -- But I did get everyone's Chances run on video:



Luke's Chances run is in that video, but I figured he also deserves a NATCH 3 video of his very own!



My friend, Karen, got a couple of runs on her camera. I hate trying to figure out how to download & format them properly off YouTube, so I'll just embed the links. She got Luke's Jumpers run and Secret's Touch-n-Go run.





So with that, we bring 2011 to a close. It has been a pretty spectacular year for Secret! She has come so far since her first trial in February. I looked back and added up that she had a total of 25 days of trialing under her belt for the year, plus her experience at NADAC Championships. She wracked up a total of 87 Qualifying runs and is at 865 Lifetime points in NADAC already. For her NATCH, she needs only one more Regular Q, five more Jumpers Q's and nine more Chances Q's -- And she hasn't even been doing this for a year yet. She's doing awesome.

I can't wait to see what 2012 brings for us!