Busy Weekend

New one for me this weekend. Saturday I went to an AKC trial in the morning and then after it was done I went to an USDAA trial to do Steeplechase with Enzo! Only big drawback was that the USDAA trial was pretty slow running so I got there at noon and had to wait until 6pm to run Steeplechase. If I had known it was going to be that slow then I would have entered at least one Masters something run with Tooney. Sunday, I just went to USDAA and only entered a few runs in the morning so I could try for a Grand Prix Q with Enzo. It was a Masters only trial and Enzo would have real issues if Tooney got to run a bunch and he only got to do one run each day.

So at the AKC trial Tooney did well and got a double Q. She wasn't really running that fast for her but she ended up with two 2nd places. She at least seems to be listening and paying attention lately. Enzo had a nice run in JWW but knocked the triple and then Standard was not so great. He leapt over the aframe contact and didn't want to sit on the table. Also had a refusal later on in the run when I pulled away from a jump too soon. The leaping on the aframe didn't bode well for Steeplechase either so I practiced a lot of nose touches with him on all kinds of stuff.

So I got to the trial and they had only run two classes out of 6 so I knew I had a while to go. I looked at the course map and the Steeplechase only had one aframe and it was a very nice course so I decided it was worth waiting around for. Enzo did really well on the course and didn't knock any bars but did leap the aframe again. He ended up just making the cutoff by 1 second with the 5 faults added to his time. Whew! Glad to at least have him qualified in two of the three events for USDAA nationals.

Sunday, was just USDAA and Jeff came along since he was getting a private lesson with Benny Wong afterwards to see if Benny had some ideas of things to do with Tooney since Jeff is out of them. Tooney ran first in P3 standard and ended up with first place.




Then Enzo ran in round 2 of steeplechase. There wasn't much room at the start line so I set him up as far back as I could but then he ended up creeping up on the first jump so he knocked that one and the next one. He's way too ballistic off the start to make it over the jump when he's too close. That's a skill that I'd like to work on with him. I also caused him to run past a jump by not supporting it enough. The first aframe he hit the yellow but definitely leapt off so I marked it by stopping him but he still leapt off the second one. Definitely not a good sign for GP.





Tooney ran clean in PNS and got 2nd. Enzo ran nice but knocked a bar on a wrap. I can tell from the video that he didn't realize that it was a wrap until he was over the bar so he tried to turn in the air. He also leapt the darn aframe contact again. The next two weeks we're doing major aframe refresher training going back to lowered aframe and backchaining and lots of rewards. Hopefully this gets him thinking about what he's doing on the aframe. We have FDDO in Phoenix this weekend so that gives him a weekend off from agility competition. Next weekend is our trip to Dixon for a 3 day USDAA trial!







The lesson with Benny went well and Jeff got a few ideas to try with her. He kind of agreed that we're kind of limited with what she can do though.