TRAINING TROOP JANUARY 9-10

I have attempted to blog a few times but we have a very busy life and finding a nice balance can be tough sometimes. Our normal week consists of Agility, hockey, dance, swimming, hitting the Gym and of course work. SO I finally have a few minutes to spare so I can write about my best weekend trialing ever...

Sarah and I arrived Friday night around 9pm and met up with Amanda,Kim and Cindy. We all settled in and had a fairly decent sleep as we had a very early rise. Saturday morning came and we started with Master Gambler - We had a great opening 56 points and when the buzzer rang I was set-up very nicely and sent him through the tunnel told him to go Teeter and as I told him to go over the jump and through the tunnel which he did ... the whistle blew and my damn foot was over the line. Can you believe that ? I was so happy with our gamble but so mad at myslef...

Master Standard #1-This run was fantastic, we had a completely clean run and no bars knocked. We head toward the dogwalk and I was a bit to far behind him and he didn't touch his contact and curled into me.... but it was just awesome.

Master Challenge - I can say that we have had huge improvemnets in the class. Normally it is a bit crazy, bars have dropped,he is barking insanely wanting information from me and I'm trying.... but I have the Hitler arm going and my head is spinning around and I'm completely frustrated. Obviously this can be a very hard course to run but we keep trying and it is getting better. He only knocked a bar, and had trouble finding the entry on the weave poles after he blasted out of the shoot....this is quite an improvement.

Starters Jumpers - AHHHHH we did it ! We successfully suceeded and received our Q and move on to Advanced Jumpers. I could feel the end coming and thinking OMG we are going to do it and when we did I was jumping around like a little girl.

Saturday night finally ended around 8 pm.... what a long day ! Our Group had a Pizza Partay and it was very yummy. We were in bed by 10 pm and I had the worst sleep ever so when 6:15 am came I was up and at it as I wasn't sleeping anyway.

We started off with Steeple chase and it was a really nice course. We ran it clean except I rotated my shoulders to early in the weave poles and he shot out at # 10.. we fixed it and kept going. We had a beauiful rear cross from a jump into the shoot.. I deceled at the right time and he turned so nice into it.
Master Standard #2 - AND another fantastic run, it was completely clean and when he came out of the tunnel I dropped my arm and he stopped abruptly right before the jump and received a refusal. I was so happy with this run as he listened so well and he did his job and I did mine.

Master Standard #3 - this course was tricky... we had to run a line of jumps but rear cross the last jump so we wouldn't enter into the weave poless. I had a great rear cross but he was so focused on those weave poles that he went out of his way to get the entry for them. It was beautiful but it just wasn't a part of the course... no big deal as he was such a good boy.

Snooker - Well... I was very tired and I wasn't thinking very clearly. Not long before I had to run Sarah had a bad incident on course and her knee popped ( super loud ) she hit the ground hard and was in serious pain. I ran and got Ray and he examined her and she was not doing well at all.
We didn't get far into our Snooker course as I was having alot of trouble focusing due to everything that was happening so we were tweeted right away which I was ok with as I just wanted to get going home by this time.

When we trial we do not receive many Q's... we usually only get one or two. We are definately getting better and this weekend showed that our hard work is really starting to pay off. Some of the big part of it is I'm not very nervous anymore and I'm just handling him -- LETTING HIM DO HIS JOB -- that is the biggest thing for me. I sometimes don't have the confidence that he will do what I ask him too.. but he always does so I decided to just use these trials as pushing the limits and see exactly where we are and what we have to work on. I'm so happy I have done this because I would have walked away with 6 Q's... wooohooo !! everything that happened was so minor. It's not about the amount of Q's I get it's about the improvement we make. I want to do really well this year at Regionals and Nationals as it is all in Alberta and I just have goals that I would like to meet.

Now that the snow is gone and it is nice out I have been working in the yard on my lunch breaks with my lead out pivot,timing and front cross's. It is me more than him and if I can figure out the timing then I know the bars will stay up and the launching will go away.

One day at a time :o)