LUCY WINS FIRST PLACE AT THE OLYMPIC S(tadium)!
(Sorry, just couldn't resist that one :-)
Guides Canins hosted a trial in conjunction with the Salon National des Animaux de Compagnie, a huge companion animal exhibition held annually at the Olympic Stadium in Montreal (host city for the 1976 Olympics). Along with the agility trial was a flyball tournament, disc competition, obedience competition, show dog competition, and tons of exhibitors including many who gave away free samples of stuff, woo hoo. It was pretty funny, you could easily tell who was there to compete in flyball/agility vs. those competing in the show dog thing. Some pretty fancy pants in that ring!
We stopped in Friday evening to do a couple of runs in the show'n'go, and she handled the dogwalk and teeter well. Then on Sunday, the real fun began.
Starters Standard
Given Lucy's teeter and dogwalk history, I was going to scratch her from this class because the dogwalk was right up against the edge of the ring along which most of the audience gathered. But, luckily the class ran before the arena opened to the public, so there was no audience to speak of. So, we gave it a go. She didn't look happy descending the frame so I decided once and for all to stop insisting on 2o2o for the frame. Come to think of it, she was quite comfortable with 2o2o on a Specials height frame, but has never liked it at the regular height. So.... really need to take some time out at some point and train a proper running frame... Anyway. She was slow and hesitant on the teeter but I let her figure it out on her own and she did it, yay! Then, only a tunnel separated it from the dogwalk, which she was very hesitant about. Took her around again to get a fresh approach and she did it, yay! She held 2o2o on both obstacles. She had a nice run but all of the hesitation ate up time and we ended up .3 of a second over.
Starters Jumpers
She was looking not very energized as we went into the ring and didn't seem to be running at her fastest, but turns out her YPS was 4.4 which isn't bad. Despite feeling slow, she had good focus and ran well, taking the only Q and therefore first place out of the 8 dogs in total who ran the course. On her post-run walk she was quick to do a #2, so that could explain some of her slowness in the ring, poor girl!
Steeplechase 
Wow, by this point the crowd was at a max and the atmosphere was really fun. Luckily for whatever reason in agility I generally don't get nervous about being watched, because there were hundreds in the audience. So, off we went. The weaves were the third obstacle, and she *walked* through them. I had no idea she was capable of weaving so slowly. Walter can't weave at all unless he has some speed. So it was no surprise that she popped at pole 10. Fiddled around to get her to pass through the last two poles. For the rest of the run her speed was very decent. A couple of goofups including one in perfect time to the music (spin in front of a tunnel) and taking the scenic route around another tunnel, purely to entertain the crowd, I'm sure. It was a really fun run.
Lucy's Steeplechase run
A few more photos:
Apologies for the wonky image/caption formatting but it's the best I can figure out right now.
In summary, it was a fun venue and Lucy handled herself really well. I like to think her flyball experience at a variety of tournaments and facilities where the sounds of dozens of madly barking dogs echoes round and round helped prepare her for playing agility in a wildly distracting environment like this one.
Stats
Temperature: about 5 outside, but pretty warm inside (~20)
Classes entered: 3 (Starters Standard, Starters Jumpers, Steeplechase)
Qs: 1 (Starters Jumpers)
Time/SCT: 74.3/74 (Starters Standard), 25.23/34 (Starters Jumpers), 59.95/43 (Steeplechase)
YPS: 4.4 (Starters Jumpers)
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