Other people had stopped at the Blue Canoe restaurant and posted pictures of their dogs so I decided we would do the same. At the Blue Canoe, we used the air pump at the gas station, now we could hear hissing from the tire. We took our pictures quickly and hit the road again for Sussex hoping that the tire would hold out.
 |
| Beckett and Keltic at the Blue Canoe |
We got to the trial site and registered. We also got the keys for our rooms at the local university. We set up our space near friends from the Ottawa area.
 |
| Our set up for Nationals |
The next morning saw the start of the Nationals events. We had Gamblers and then Standard to run the first day. Beckett was spinning a lot in the Gambler so we didn't get through the opening I planned and we didn't get the main gamble either. That was fine it was just the first event. Our Standard went well except for taking down the double jump; I was happy with how he ran, a 5 fault run is pretty good. We also had our second Steepechase run. It had been pouring rain and the ground was muddy. Beckett was nearly the 100th dog in the ring. Even though we ran a cautious but clean run both of us slipped a little. Beckett's time was just over 40 seconds and we only had a standard course time of 42 seconds. That was his 24th Q, now only one to go for his title.
The next day we would run Jumpers and Gamblers. We had a decent jumpers run but I ran to close to the jump he was supposed to serp and he pushed to the back of the jump for an off course. The rest of the run was nice but 20 faults put us way down in the standings for that event. The next event Gamblers was a tough one. I didn't even think Beckett would go out the distance obstacle in the main Gamble. Our opening was good, he almost did the first mini and did the second mini gamble twice. He surprised me and did get out to the jump of the main gamble but then took the jump on the line rather than getting out the dog walk.
On the last day of Nationals, we had a jumpers and a standard run. The jumpers was going nice until I found myself out of place after a front cross. I called Beckett off a jump thinking he was going off course, turned out he was right and I was wrong and I caused us 5 faults for the refusal. I decided to go for it in our last run the Standard, after all we had nothing to lose. We got a refusal on the broad jump right off the bat, then an off course when he took the tunnel instead of the A-frame and a refusal on the weave entry. On the good side, he did stay out to do the jump after the tunnel under the dog walk and got the broad jump which we don't see all that often. I think we have only seen it once before.
I have to say that I was somewhat disappointed in our Nationals performance, while I didn't really expect to place I had hoped to better our Regionals score where we had a score of 465 points; at Nationals we ended up with only 364 points.Trying to focus on the positive, most of the errors were mine and Beckett actually ran well. I am considering moving him to Specials though so he doesn't have to jump as high and will no longer see the double jump. There are indications he's slowing down some so maybe the lower jump height would help. Next year, Nationals will be out in Burnaby BC, too far for us to travel so by the time they are back out east Beckett could be nearly a veteran dog so another reason to think about letting him jump the lower height.
Looking forward already to the next time when both Beckett and Keltic will have a Nationals Adventure. More on our east coast holiday in another post.
