Close but no cigar

Beckett and I trialled at Absolute Agility this Saturday. It was their last indoor trial of the year. The weather was nice so Tucker came along as a spectator and enjoyed the hot dogs and walks on the fairgrounds.

Beckett got two more Q's, one in Steeplechase and one in Master Jumpers. Two more Master Jumpers Q's will give him his Master Jumpers title. It would be really neat if we could do that before his third birthday in June.

Both the Steeplechase and the Jumpers course were nice and flowing.  There was a serpentine in the Jumpers run, with the tire as the middle obstacle (obstacles 11, 12, and 13). A lot of people walked it with a front cross between the first jump and the tire but I decided to do it as a serpentine and Beckett was just fantastic.

I lost my way for a split second at obstacle 17 and nearly forgot my front cross to put Beckett into the tunnel. Luckily, I remembered where I was going just in the nick of time. We ran the course in 40.03 seconds, the standard course time was 50 seconds.  It was our fastest run of the day with Beckett doing 4.75 yards per second.

But that first Master Standard Q still eluded us. In our first Master Standard run, I tried a front cross on the descending side of jump 3. I was late and got in Beckett's way, he started to spin and we incurred a refusal on obstacle 4. The rest of our run was very nice; but even though it didn't feel like it, it was a bit slow with Beckett only doing 2.88 yards per second. The course time was tight so in addition to the five course faults we also had 0.66 time faults, a first for us.

In our second Master Standard run, Beckett bailed off the teeter. A former instructor of mine said it was when I turned my shoulders just a little that pulled him off. I guess we have to do some proofing on the teeter. The second Master Standard also had a very hard weave entry, well it is Masters, but it was quite a long distance from the jump to the weaves. I did a front cross, some people sent their dogs on to the weaves and then rear crossed, but I didn't think that would work to well with Beckett. At the time, it seemed like he was spinning a lot but watching the video, he actually went to the weaves quite well.

Beckett - Masters Standard

So we finished the course with only 5 faults and ran the course about 5 seconds under time. Beckett was running about 3.4 yps which is about normal for him.

Overall, we had a great day. We weren't eliminated in any event. And we basically had two 5 fault Master Standards, so we were close but no cigar, well Beckett did get a lot of hot dogs and he's too young to smoke anyway.