Snookered

We went to our first outdoor agility trial of the season yesterday.  It was overcast with a breeze but not too cold. You needed a jacket when you weren't running but it was warm enough to run without one. I brought Teddy along so he didn't have to stay home by himself yet again. I don't think he much cared for the collapsible crate, next time I'll bring the really big crate and they can both hang out together. 

Liam was in four events starting with an Advanced Gamblers. In Gamble, you plan your own opening to collect points, each type of obstacle has a point value. The judge can include mini gambles that you can do from behind a line to earn double the points.We had an opening that included a send to a tunnel, Liam got it twice. The main Gamble also had a send to a tunnel but Liam thought "been there, done that" and incurred a refusal on the tunnel. 

Our next event was an Advanced Snooker, if you've read my blog for while, you know Liam has an eyesight issue that makes it hard for him to judge the take off point for a jump and consequently he takes down quite a few jumps. In this Advanced Snooker, obstacles 5 and 6 were combinations and both used the same jump as part of the combination. Obstacle 7 was the teeter and I knew Liam was unlikely to do it so I had to plan a course that gave him the points he needed before we had to do number 7.

Advanced Snooker

I had planned a bit of a risky course. I was using obstacle 5 twice and obstacle 6 once before running the closing of the course, obstacles 2 through 7 as numbered. Liam needed to complete obstacle 5 successfully in the close to have enough points for a qualifying score. That meant he had to do jump 5b four times without knocking the bar, and really he couldn't knock any bars or we wouldn't have enough points. We had a nice clean run and Liam had just put his feet on the teeter when the buzzer sounded for time. He needed 32 points for a qualifying score and we got 39. It was the only event of the day where he didn't knock a bar down.

Our next event was a Standard run. Liam refused the dog walk so again I put my finger in his collar and just coaxed him along, no pressure, just verbal encouragement.  We didn't get to the teeter before the time ran out so after the trial was over for the day I asked one of the club members if I could put Liam on the teeter. He did it just fine, once on leash and once by himself. I should ask at the end of every trial if I can do that. Our last event was an Advanced Jumpers, it didn't look nice on the course map but walked and ran fairly nicely for Liam and me. Some of the handlers of fast dogs had issues with off courses because the dogs didn't turn tightly. Liam seemed rather pokey but our time was quite respectable, we had an allowed course time of 60 seconds and we ran the course in 47.89 seconds but unfortunately we had one bar down.

I think Liam was a little snookered by the time we did Jumpers but we did have our Snooker Q so I was happy with that. Liam now has two Advanced Gambles and two Advanced Snooker, one more Q in each of those games and he'll move to Masters.  

The trial ran quickly as there were two judges and they used two rings so no waiting around for course builds and walk throughs. We were home by around 3:30 pm usually it's much closer to dinner time. Our next agility trial is on 6 June, and we have a virtual Hoopers trial on 30 May.

There was a photographer at the trial. She takes nice photos. I am planning to buy some but it's so hard to chose. Which would you chose? Link to Liam's pictures below.

Znlens Photos - Liam