USDAA Trial

Had fun at the USDAA trial this weekend. First one that I've been to in quite a few months. I decided to run Enzo in Performance. Probably will from now on. I definitely have more fun running him at 16" than 22". Tooney also ran in one run each day. P3 Gamblers yesterday and P3 Jumpers today. She didn't get the gamble which was near impossible but she ran clean in Jumpers! She's a good girl and it's fun to be running her again. No video so I'll write a little play by play.

Enzo was really awesome all weekend. He missed his very first dogwalk of the weekend but it was a dogwalk going into nothing in gamblers which is a weak point. We turned around and did it again and he got it. He didn't miss anymore contacts the rest of the weekend and we didn't have any contact related handling faults. Woohoo! In P3 standard, he knocked the first bar and fell off the table but other than that he did great. He even had to turn up the dogwalk from the tunnel underneath and still got he contact. I recalled him up the dogwalk instead of babysitting the entrance and that let me run up and did a front cross at the end. Glad I practiced that at home this week!

Enzo ran clean in Performance Grand Prix. The dogwalk exit was straight off so that made it easier. He ended up in 2nd place by 0.2 sec. There was one wide turn when I was late on my front cross so that cost a little time. I need to make sure I rotate quicker when I front cross. One of my bad habits.

In Performance Speed Jumping (or is it Performance Steeplechase now?) I was late on a front cross again and he almost took an off course jump but he called off of it but knocked the next bar. He still made it into the second round and got a Q.

Today we ran in gamblers first and this time it was a more reasonable gamble. You could pick either a weave send or teeter send so I picked the weave send. He sent out to the weaves but when he got there he stopped and looked at me standing next to the teeter and ran back. Gamblers just isn't something I train for so can't blame him. He did hit both dogwalks though! Then we had to run the 2nd round of PSJ right after that. Sometimes he's slower when he does back to back runs but he wasn't this time! I ended getting stuck behind him and got an off course.

P3 Standard was good but unfortunately he knocked the very last bar! I think he lost his footing in the dirt. I heard him scambling. oh well! nice run anyways.

P3 Snookers was pretty straightforward. I did two 6's and two 7's. He finished everything and ended up 1st for a Super Q! Good boy! Snookers with him always makes me a bit nervous since he's and scanner and shoots away from me easily.

P3 jumpers had some tricky angles. At this point the dirt was hard packed with loose stuff on top so he had trouble with his footing and wasn't able to run as fast. He tries to hard to move quicker, lots of scrambly steps and knocked a bar.

I'm happy with his runs this weekend even though the Q rate wasn't high. He got 6 of 7 dogwalks and all of his aframes!