Our NATCH bar wasn't ready for us yet yesterday, so Kaiser got to pose for his official NATCH 2 picture at the end of the trial today. :o) They eventually talked me into taking one with the judge, but that's not on my camera so we'll have to see if it surfaces eventually. Typically my rule of thumb is that I'll pose for the first one, but after that we can just have the dog. lol
Typically I don't really expect much from these end-of-winter trials after a miserably long winter of no training. Historically we start to crash and burn right about now, but we had a spectacularly good weekend! Maybe that handful of ring rentals that we've done this winter have helped, who knows.
Kaiser had a perfect day today! He put in a lovely jumpers run that was the fastest of my crew (but not by much, they were all 25.XX, so they were all close!). We had another nice Chances course today -- they were all pretty nice this weekend -- and Kaiser sailed through it (literally, he sailed over the a-frame with a LOT of air...) for a "bonus" Q on his NATCH weekend. Then he put in two really lovely Regular rounds to finish out his perfect day.
I was seriously concerned about him following that day of UKI that we did. I've just never seen him jump so horribly at 8" and lack such confidence. I was even more worried on Friday when I saw hints of that doubt and stuttering when we started our first runs, but the little man just got better and better as the weekend went on. I still don't know if the UKI disaster was due to any one thing, but cumulatively it really played a number on him and I'm so happy to have my happy little dude back. He was running so nice today. I'm not sure if we'll have made any 100+ DRI runs this weekend, but we'll have to see.
I wasn't sure what to expect from Secret on her third day of trialing in a row, but she was ready to play! I was so thrilled about this! There have not been many times I have even bothered to try running her so many days in a row, but the two-per-day format agrees with her. That, along with dropping her least favorite class (Chances), seems to have made her a very happy camper. In her last run, Regular 1, she came out of the tunnel after the weaves like a firecracker was up her butt. :o) I had to do a rear cross because of it and this only seemed to push her to go faster. We had a super fun ending to that run (she did miss the weave entry, but was otherwise clean for a Q). Even more awesome, though, was that while we were waiting for our turn she was grabbing the leash and trying to get me to play with her. On day three! She wanted to play! Jumpers in the morning was also a great run for a Q -- she was only like 0.2 seconds behind Kaiser's time if I recall correctly.
Luke's time in Jumpers was just slightly behind Secret's but unfortunately he dropped a bar when I did a short send to get into place for a blind cross. With his Q in Chances today he is now just one Chances Q away from NATCH 5 ---- and three Jumpers Q's.... I dare say he will finish on Jumpers, which will be a first for me. I'm so used to everyone finishing up on Chances! There are only two shots at Jumpers at the April FDC trial, so I guess we'll be waiting a while. Oh well. Luke's Chances Q today put us at 6/6 for the weekend, and I think we're at 10 in a row with the last trial! Guess we're just making up for that dry spell. I'm just glad to know that our Chances aren't broken, because I was really starting to wonder... Not that I'd have any reason to wonder why, considering we never practice these skills anymore...
As I'd feared, Kizzy's brain really did melt out of her ears today. She was high as a kite going into the Jumpers ring and I knew that course would cause us problems because there was a sequence that ran right past the exit. I actually lost her before then, but she came back -- then left the ring when we went past the exit. A few people told me they felt her problems today might be from a sheltie with a piercing bark that kept carrying on during her runs, but I can hear that dog barking in all of her runs on video from yesterday so I don't know if it's true -- or if she was just in a state of mind that any little thing was going to give her a reason to do her own thing.
There were good moments. Before I lost her in Jumpers she was running like a bat out of hell (pretty much a dead giveaway that she was going to leave me, though). In the second round of Regular she started out really well with the a-frame and doing her weaves at the back of the arena. I lost her on a front cross before a tunnel, but thanks to us having the arena gated shut she did come back and finish the course. Unfortunately she then played the most fun game of keep-away ever with about four different people being sucked into her game before she allowed herself to be caught (she was the last dog of the trial and believe me, everyone was doing their very best to make sure she had a good ending experience here).
After Friday & Saturday I was feeling pretty positive about her AKC runs coming up in April. After today I'm a bit more eh..... I think I'll keep her entries in, but go in with the mindset of scratching her Saturday runs if Friday is atrocious. We'll see. There's a whole month between now and then and hopefully we'll get to squeeze in a little training. It would be nice to find a new place to go do a ring rental if possible.
No video from today -- Only Kizzy's runs were taped and honestly I just don't think there is much to share. Instead I'd rather watch her video from the other two days and remember the good stuff. :o)
We will be waiting to hear if Target wants either of the Klee Kai this week. I'm not really fond of how they're doing it, but apparently the producer is making her decisions based on her needs at the end of each day. So basically, we get no notice? I had to let Barbara know that Monday and Wednesday are completely out for me this week due to meetings at work that I can't miss/reschedule. Tuesday and Thursday are a little more flexible, but still booked. It's like the worst week ever for something like this to come up, especially with the last-minute scheduling. Every time a meeting notice came through my work e-mail last week I was like, "aww crap." Oh well. Maybe they won't even want the Klee Kai this time, we'll have to see. Meanwhile, Kaiser is losing all of his hair and will be even more naked after he gets a bath (although this is not a bad thing when wearing costumes). Kizzy, on the other hand, has yet to actually blow coat since she arrived in July. Odd.
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