I have finally recovered enough from the Cluster to talk about it! What a fun show. Lots of things going on, lots of dogs, lots of people, lots of shopping! I had a blast.
Thursday was just rally with Tessie. She warmed up brilliantly and was really happy, offering behaviors, heeling around the crating area like a mad woman. I knew the course would be tough for her -- it had many of the exercises that she enjoys the least, including a 360-turn-left as the very first sign. I practiced all of the hard signs in the crating area and reinforced them heavily.
I got her into the ring and she made great eye contact at the set up. I handed my leash to the judge and looked down at her and smiled. I asked her if she was ready; she held the eye contact. We started heeling forward. We got to the first sign. I gave her the hand cue I use for backing up while heeling, that we use for left 270s/360s, and she completely checked out. Nose glued to the ground, frantically sniffing. You would think I clocked her upside the head while giving her this signal.
I got her attention again and just used the verbal with no hand signal. She did the 360, but wasn't happy about it. The next exercise was to weave once through the cones. She was DONE. Sniffing, circling, wandering. We left.
I have NO idea what suddenly made her go from "happy obedience super-star" to "the monsters are going to eat me", but goodness gracious, I hope I never see that kind of 'crash' again. I sat on a bench just outside the ring for a little while until the frantic sniffing stopped and she started harassing me for cookies again (aka, normal Tessie behavior). We did some tricks and went back to the crate. Throughout the weekend I walked her through that building and she was totally fine. Very strange.
We set up for agility that night, which was crazy. There was a mad rush for crating space, just like at Premier. The doors opened at 3:30 sharp and I saw people RUNNING in with crates and ground covers. I staked claim to a really nice location which I shared with my friend Laura and two of her English Cockers.
We spent the night at my aunt's house, which is about twenty minutes away from the show site. My aunt has two big, goofy, intact male Golden Retrievers. Tessie actually handled them very well, and told them off when they came on too strong. Strata was initially so frightened of this big, bouncing dogs that he actually peed on the floor a little! After a short walk outside with the two of them, however, they became fast friends. Strata spent the rest of the evening teaching them how to play *his* way, as in, mutual nosepoking followed by lots of zoomies. Strata was -covered- in dog drool by bedtime, but seemed quite pleased with himself. :)
We arrived at the show site bright and early because Strata needed measuring and Tessie was in the first class of the day. Strata's measuring was... interesting. His first measurement was at 17 1/4". I had to resist the urge to clock the judge upside the head with the wicket. Was she measuring his ears or something? (If anyone wants the name of this VMO, contact me privately and I will provide you with it.) This same judge also measured Yankee, Laura's dog, at 15 3/4" and he has never been a hair over 15 1/4", period. Both dogs were remeasured within 15 minutes. Yankee's measurement was 15 1/4" and Strata's was 16 5/8". MUCH better. The second measurement is the one that appears on the height card, thank goodness, or else my dog would be screwed for the International Standard class...
I quickly walked my course for Tessie, which was Open Standard. We were a little out of sync and ended up with two wrong courses and a refusal, but still under time. At least she was movin' her buns!
I had a long wait before my next class, so I did a lot of volunteering. Each class worked earned you a $5 voucher good at not just the food vendor, but also ANY of the vendors in the agility building. Way cool! I ended up earning $40 in vouchers over the weekend, which I redeemed for Amanda Shyne's Contacts 360 DVD. :D (I will post a review of it in a future post, but in a nutshell: it's awesome.)
My next run was Novice JWW with Strata. It was a neat course that started with a tunnel, so I got to really smack him around and rev him up right before we started. The run began nicely enough, but during a pinwheel of jumps, he knocked a bar. I -think- it was because there was a building support pole between us, and my theory is that he turned his head to look at me, saw a big honkin' white pole instead of my body, and dropped his legs a bit, therefore taking the bar down. After the bar came down, he became -extremely- handler-focused and didn't want to leave my side, incurring a refusal, which we fixed, and then immediately he refused the weave poles. He was just bouncing up at me going "mom! mom! mom! mom!" so I stood totally still, pointed to the weaves, and waited for him to get his act together. From there, we ran the course beautifully.
Very quickly after that, Tessie had a really interesting JWW run. I pulled her out of the last pole of the weaves by front crossing while she was in them, fixed the last pole, and then got sniffies. Bad handler, look what you did to your very nice dog! We managed a Q on this course despite the refusal and being OT. I was quite surprised!
The next morning, Tessie's Open Standard run was a catastrophe. My mother always stands close to the ring so that Tessie knows where she is. I leave my mother 2-3 dogs before Tessie, and we go stand at the ring gate and do tricks until going in to run. Well, somehow Tessie "forgot" where my mother was and started panicking shortly before we went into the ring. I calmed her down, brought her back to my mother, and then brought her back to the ring gate. No dice. She went off-course after the 3rd obstacle when she ran over to wiggle her butt at my mother. The rest of the run was equally as catastrophic, let's just put it that way.
Strata's Novice JWW run was gorgeous, but he again knocked a bar for seemingly no reason. I wasn't doing anything silly as a handler, he wasn't turning, etc. Very frustrating. He also did a run-by of the weave poles on his first attempt because he saw a -very- juicy tunnel entrance nearby, but I called him back to me before he had a chance to do the tunnel.
Tessie's Open JWW run was pretty good. I really, really wanted to do a rear cross to set up the middle section of the course but remember, Tessie is my "no rear cross" dog when it comes to trials. She and I were neck-and-neck at the part where I needed to cross, so it didn't really matter if I did a front or a rear, it was gonna be ugly, because I was neither ahead nor behind of my dog. I sent her ahead of me with a "go jump" cue and did the rear. Worked perfectly! I got some sniffing a couple of jumps later, then a run-by of a jump which I was able to quickly and smoothly fix. She plowed through all 12 weave poles with a lot of speed and we finished the course from there. The sniffing put her a couple of seconds OT, but it was still good enough for a Q and for her OJP! :)
Sunday was awesome for both dogs, we really ended on a good note.
I had high hopes for Tessie's Open Standard run. The course had the A-frame early, which tends to make for a happy springer, but it did have a tricky tunnel where the dogs were faced with both entrances. If you didn't have a stopped contact it was quite hard (it was after the DW). We started the course with a false start -- the timer told me to go, I went, we got to the A-frame, and I heard a loud whistle. The timer took full responsibility for the error, so I wasn't in trouble. ;) We then started the course 'for real' and she SMOKED it! Perfect contacts, perfect weaves, the only thing that could've been faster was her sit on the table (she hesitated for a moment). She won the class to finish her OAP. Naturally, this extra-perfect run is the run that the video camera ate. Sigh. You'll just have to trust that it was really pretty!
I had forgotten to move Tessie up to Excellent JWW, so I decided to end on a really, really good note with her Standard run. We got her a big cookie from the kind folks at Wigglebottom Snax ("by Springer people, for Springer people!") -- she LOVES their treats!
Strata's last run was crazy. I did a pretty long leadout because it was a straight line of jumps, after which I needed to front-cross to change his direction. I'm glad I lead out so far because he came off the start line like a racehorse out of the gate! I was scrambling to keep up with him the whole way. When he got to the weave poles, my plan was to move out laterally to get in position for a front cross. Unfortunately, I had to use the weave poles as my chance to catch up with him, and not much else. (I think I need to hit the gym!) I wasn't able to get the cross in, so I couldn't handle the finish properly... and therefore inadvertently cued an off-course jump. Ugh, disappointing! He kept all of his bars up and even with the off-course (which we fixed) he ran just over 4.5 YPS. Faaaaast!
So yeah, all in all, we had a pretty darn good time. I'm disappointed that Strata and I couldn't get our act together enough to finish his NAJ title, but I'm really, really, really pleased that Tessie finished BOTH of her Open titles. I had been planning to stop running her after Open, but I think we will pursue our Excellent A Jumpers title (AJP) because she enjoys JWW so much. Maybe we'll go for the Excellent A Standard title, too... we'll see. :)