The Q that Wasn't

Thanksgiving Sunday, saw us at Train-R-Paws for an agility trial.  I hadn't realized it was Thanksgiving that weekend when I registered for the trial but it turned out to be a nice long weekend just the same, after all what better way to spend the day.

It was a very nice autumn day although it was very cold in the morning and when the sun went behind the clouds. It was a jackets on, jackets off kind of day. It was the first time I had been to Train-R-Paws and I was surprised how close it actually is to my place, only about 40 minutes.  I can see that it could very hot and buggy during the summer though, the field is cut out of the woods and the woods are quite thick right up to the field so there's no really good areas to set up in the trees for shade.

Our sunshade and crates

Beckett didn't have a great day. He had a number of refusals when I tried to rear cross; something that we definitely need to work on but when I saw the course map for the second Gamblers I knew it was one that he could do. It was very much like the Advanced Gamblers courses that he had Q'd in.

We started with trying one of the mini's and Beckett knocked the last bar. Then when I called him to me, he knocked the next bar; it was the 4 point obstacle.  I went on to complete my opening and was just about to send him into the tunnel once again when the buzzer went. I used the double jump to bring him around to the first obstacle of the Gamble, a jump, then it was tunnel, dog walk and tire. Beckett gave me a little lip after the jump but did the rest of the Gamble beautifully. I didn't think with the knocked bars that we had enough points but when I went to pick up my score sheet, I didn't see the 5 points for the weaves.

I went and asked the judge if she remembered if Beckett had popped his weaves and she said he had slipped a weave. I couldn't argue with that as I don't always watch him when he's in the weaves as he's usually very consistent but on that day, he had almost come out of the weaves a couple of times and I hadn't yet seen this video.

Beckett Master Gamblers

Turn up your volume and tell me that you can't hear the judge call "5" after the weaves.

I add up his score sheet as having 23 points; with the weaves, he would have had 28. The minimum number you need to qualify.

I guess in a way it's Kismet. Ceilidh had a Masters Jumpers Q with a 5 fault run, a knocked bar that somehow didn't get recorded and now Beckett loses out on a Q for lack of 5 points that he did do.  But why couldn't it have happened on any other game but Gamblers since we struggle so hard to get them. Oh well, thems the breaks! We did come home with his 12th Steeplechase Q.