Monday, November 21, 2011

Making Advances

This weekend Beckett and I were at Dream Fields for their last weekend trial of 2011.  Beckett was entered in two Advanced Standards, one Advanced Jumpers and one Advanced Snooker. I told him Friday evening that I wanted one Standard Q and one Jumpers Q from him at this trial.

And, do you know what, I think he listened.

In our first standard run, Beckett had a little difficulty with his weaves, I don't think he collected enough and he popped out at pole 3 which I think he actually ran into; no faults there as he had made the entry. The rest of run was quite nice except that one of my front crosses was a little early and he took a bar down as he tried to turn in mid air. A 5 fault run that still was good enough for the best run of all mini-regular dogs.

The second standard started terribly, I was sure we were faulted for a refusal at the tire (obstacle 5) and then Beckett barrel-rolled out of the chute (obstacle 7) and the thought crossed my mind that things were going from bad to worse. Then I heard the call "No time" from the timer. One of the ring crew had inadvertently stopped the time when she tried to raise the bar on the last jump which had the electronic eyes for the timer. Whew!! We got to start over again. The next run ran so much better, no spin at the tire, no fall at the chute. My front cross was late from the tunnel into the weaves but Beckett still nailed his entry. I held my breath on the dog walk, half expecting him to leap off but he didn't and he sailed over the last jump for his third Advanced Standard qualifying score, another best run for mini-regular dogs and his title of Advanced Agility Dog of Canada.

Next up, was our Advanced Snooker run. We got through the opening and I thought we would be home free from there but coming out of the tunnel (obstacle 3) to the double jump (obstacle 4) , Beckett landed on the second bar of the double; that was the second time this has happened.  I'm going to have to do some more training with the double as I don't think he quite realizes it's coming up and perhaps I need a different verbal command for the double. The spread doesn't seem to cause him any problems but with that jump I'm sure he can see width of the jump which I don't think is as obvious on a double. No qualifying score as we only had 27 points.

Our last run of the day was an Advanced Jumpers. There was a couple tunnel to tunnel entries that I thought would cause a spin or two but Beckett took them quite in stride. We had a beautiful run. On a course with a standard course time of 37 seconds, Beckett finished with a time of 26.99 seconds, running almost at 5 yards per second (4.95 yps to be exact).  This was his second Advanced Jumpers Q and his third best run of the day.

So we made great advances on the weekend and now have only two more qualifying scores to go (one each in Advanced Snooker and Advanced Jumpers) for his Advanced Games title.  Next weekend at the last trial we are entered in for 2011, Beckett will run in his first Masters events. Not too bad, for a young fella who only began competing 11 months ago on 22 January.

Lets hope Beckett was really listening last Friday as I told him I wanted a Snooker and Jumpers Q at the trial this upcoming weekend.

2 comments:

  1. Wow! You two have accomplished so much in a short amount of time!

    I always love watching your runs.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Both of you did so well. Bravo!!

    ReplyDelete

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