All Dogs trial; Lucy destined to stay in Starters forever?

Ok, I know I said Lucy would be taking a time out from trial events involving frames. I actually had emailed the trial secretary shortly after making that decision, to cancel her entry. Well, all of a sudden two weeks ago I received an email confirming her entry in the trial. It would seem that my email to them got trapped in a spam filter or something. So, rather than complicate things for them I just let it go with the hopes that maybe, just maybe, it was a sign that she should be in the trial and would maybe, just maybe, end her ever-lengthening non-Q streak and get her Starters Standard title.

Well. In fact, perhaps I should have paid more attention to another sign, a potentially ominous sign indicating that maybe, just maybe, Lucy is destined to stay in Starters Standard forever.

What, you ask, is that ominous sign? This is what the entry confirmation said:

Trial Date: May 8, 2029

# Event Name Event # Judge

1 Starters Standard 1 1 John Willis

2 Starters Standard 2 2 John Willis

Yup, apparently Lucy will still be trying for her third and final Starters Standard Q in 2029. Simple computer program glitch, or sign of things to come? Time will tell! But hey, if she's still doing agility in 2029, Starters or not, I'll be thrilled. ;-D

Down to business. In Standard #1, she had actually a pretty good run. However, I was in spectator mode watching Lucy hit the yellow on the #4 frame (using the highly trained, highly respected method commonly known as Point and Pray) and my delay in directing her to the next jump caused me to lose her to several seconds of sightseeing, refusal-incurring, and backjumping.

In Standard #2, I lost her after the second jump. I think I have figured out that one of our problems is that if my handling isn't at least close to being spot on or if I'm late in cueing the next obstacle unless it's right in front of her, I lose her. She goes off on a little stress sightseeing (not groundsniffing, and not really zooming, just loping around in a most unfocused way, looking at everything except me). So back to Standard #2, there was a front cross after the second jump which I must have bungled, because off she went. She regrouped fairly well for the second half of the course.

Also, I noticed that at the end of both runs, she was quick to leave the ring. Last year, she used to check in with me at the end of the runs and we'd leave together.

So, darn darn darn. I was hoping that our stroke of bad runs at Dreamfields and Morningstar was due perhaps to those facilities being indoors which maybe she didn't like too much. Blame it on the roof, yeah, yeah... Blame it on the walls... that shut her in... Whatever you do... don't put the blame on you... There's your Milli Vanilli fix of the day. Anyway, nope it's not the roof because I don't think I've ever seen her as zoned out and unresponsive as in her little "zoomy" in the second run today.

I really really hope we can get back to the place we were last summer when she was awesome and really having fun out there playing agility with me.

As a pick-me-up to remind myself of Lucy's enthusiastic agility year last year, here's a repost of Lucy's 2007 agility compilation video. See, there are benefits to doing such little projects. :-)