Lucy, Walter, and I piled into the car dark and early at 4:30 this morning for a road trip to Kingston. Lucy had only two classes today, both Starters Standard.
Venue
The venue was one we've never been to, one of those gigantic bubble buildings used for soccer and other sports. To maintain the air pressure in the building (or something like that), the only door available for use is a revolving door and the change in air pressures causes the ears to pop. Both dogs handled the door situation and articificial turf just fine. It was quite a nice venue and the atmosphere in the Masters ring was pretty cool with the lighting and all. The Starters/Advanced ring wasn't so fancy but still did the job.
Starters Standard #1
Her run was going pretty well (aside from an unheld frame contact) until I called her to me to try to collect her before the teeter. The intention was to prevent another scary teeter incident. Well, this was the wrong strategy to employ because immediately after responding to my call, she shut down and went into about 20 seconds of stress paw-licking/biting (not related to her now-healed paw cut which was on a different foot). That's her default stress behaviour in general, but I had never ever seen her do it in agility. Eventually she came out of it and we continued. Did the teeter just fine and had a great tail-wagging table. She skipped a pole late in the weaves but got them on the retry. She ran past one of the jumps in the closing line but we just kept going anyway. Oh, and she held 2o2o on the dogwalk which was the second obstacle of the course.
Starters Standard #2
Well this was a very different Lucy from a few hours ago! She seemed a lot more confident and was having more fun. I made no issue of the teeter and what do you know, she handled it just fine. Nice confidence on the dogwalk too, far improved over the first run today. On the down side, no sight of 2o2o on the frame or dogwalk. Understandable for the frame because earlier this fall I briefly experimented with not requiring a 2o2o but later decided to stick to 2o2o until I can properly retrain to a running contact, so no wonder she's confused about it, poor dog. But the dogwalk contact expectation has always been 2o2o. Will have to take advantage of the training allowed rule next time... but this time the Q was just too darn tempting since the dogwalk was the second last obstacle. So she got her first Starters Standard Q, taking second to a sharp young border collie.
Starters Standard #2
Some stats...
Temp: mainly sunny, 5 degrees outside but a toasty ~18 degrees inside
Pre-trial exercise: none
Classes entered: 2 (Starters Standard #1 and #2)
Qs: 1 (Starters Standard #2)
Time/SCT: 101.06/68 (Starters Standard #1), 49.87/67 (Starters Standard #2)
YPS: 3.01 (St St #2)
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