Secret's Journey

Behold!  My magnificent Paint skills are at work again!  lol  Actually, it looks better than the one I drew by hand and snapped a picture of, so it's what I'm using for the post today.  It would be awesome if I would actually invest in Course Designer one day, but until then this will have to do.

I think my course design skills are improving.  Not that this was a terribly technical course or anything, but it was fun and the last half after the chute lent itself to several variations.

As I posted yesterday, my only real goal of the evening was to have a brief refresher on the equipment we don't usually see at trials.  It was a breezy evening, so I brought the chute out first to test the angle of the wind.  I bet you can guess which direction it was blowing.  With that figured out, I more or less built off the chute -- and my table, which I was too lazy to move.  Obstacle one is the tire (not a hoop).  Secret's jumps were at 22" and the boys both ran at 12" with the table set at appropriate heights for each.

Everyone ran very well and we didn't encounter any issues -- save for the one time when Secret jumped through the center of the broad jump to slice the turn to jump four.

I did a little experiment with Secret and tossed her toy over by the finish line to proof running with that distraction and no reward on my person.  Yeah...  Not so much!  When I chucked her Udder Tug across the yard she was a good girl and held her stay, but she fixated on the location of the toy and wouldn't look back at me.  When I got her attention and released her at the first obstacle, she instantly started to take off for her toy.  I was able to stop her with a quick, "Ah!!" to get her attention and we started the course -- but when she came blasting out of the chute she ran straight to her toy and that was the end of that.  Might be something we should continue to work through!

I'm happy with Kaiser's performance at 12", but he's always a better jumper at home it would seem.  This weekend will be a big test for him to see if he'll be able to continue forward with USDAA.  Tonight he will receive his seventh in a series of eight shots of Adequan as part of the loading dose process.  Typically they are as "good" as they'll ever get during the loading dose period, so if he is still noticeably uncomfortable or hesitant at the trial this weekend I think I'll have my answer.  I already know that he has no problems at 8" and he would be fine to continue running NADAC at that height -- So I guess if that's his only option I'll just deal with it.

By the way, for anyone who might be interested in this information and isn't able to keep up with all of the changes in NADAC (yes, that's right, there's been *another* change) --- There is no longer any designation/separation between Skilled and Proficient at any level.  The MEDAL/NATCH-S is no more.  A NATCH is a NATCH is a NATCH.

I don't really care.  I've been listing titles for Secret & Kaiser (who both run in Skilled) as Proficient titles all along (ie: EAC vs EAS).  I planned to say they earned their NATCH, so this just works swell for me.  :o)  I can certainly understand why some people might view it as "unfair" or whatnot since Skilled has those stupid 5 pt Q's (which I hate, for the record), but it is what it is.  And come on -- to those talking about how it devalues the award, didn't we already go over that when the video Q's were combined with those earned at a trial?  You really can't get worse than that.