Morning Star trial - OMG!

Perhaps Lucy's best ever trial!!

(As background to this post, note that the last time Lucy ran at this facility, in March 2008, my blog post was titled "A-frame shame"... It was not a fun time.)

Originally Lucy was signed up for just one run, Advanced Jumpers on Saturday, first thing in the morning.

Well. She kicked that course's butt!!!! It was I think our best ever run together. She was bouncy and hyper before the run, so I knew she was feeling good and would most likely be in FAST mode. So I prepared to run like stink! And run like stink I had to! She was just booting it. Unfortunately the run didn't get on video, but I must have done a half decent job of giving Lucy timely information on where to go next because she didn't run off zooming and instead stayed on track the whole way. It felt just great. One of those runs that you feel you're flying by the seat of your pants, teetering on the edge of chaos and brilliance. The best kind of run. Granted, there were only 11 dogs in the whole event, but her time of 27.7 seconds was the fastest clean time, and she was less than a second off the fastest dog. Her yps was 5.4, which according to my (incomplete) trial results database, is the fastest yps that either she OR Walter has ever posted on a clean run. I know lots of dogs are way faster than that, but dang she really impressed me. With this Q, she now moves up to Masters Jumpers! (She's in Advanced everything else.) Since there is no video, my special memento will be the course map:

Since Lucy was feeling so happy both in and out of the ring, and since the trial hosts were accepting additional day-of entries, and since her a-frame re-train is complete, I added her to an Advanced Standard. She was slower for this run, but ran really well. One weird moment where she ran right past a tunnel and then went to tea with the timer and scribe, but she promptly came back and finished the run, woo hoo! A few more glitches with the rest of the run, but whatever, she was happy. She stuck all of her contacts, and I did something I've NEVER done before, which is to pet my dog on course. What's a mere 5 faults for the chance to really let your dog know they did something special? Not sure why I've never done that before, and in fact after this I did it a few more times this weekend with Lucy, and even once with Walter for sticking his dogwalk. Here's the video:



I know I should have left well enough alone and called it a day, but... the Masters Jumpers course at the end of the day was in the enclosed ring... and it was a gorgeous course, flowy with lots of front crosses... and Lucy was still bright and perky hanging out in her crate... So, I threw caution to the wind and threw Lucy into the run! It was the first time I ever got to run both Lucy and Walter in the same trial run, well except for K9 Kup which is a just-for-fun thing. They were running tall to small, so Walter was first. I forgot to call him coming out of a tunnel but made sure to fix that for Lucy. She was quite slow and hoppy, not much gas left in the tank! But, she still looked like she was having a good time. Her running and jumping style in this run reminds me of her look-alike, Tippy Toes, who runs in 10" vets. They are both very cute :)



So that was Saturday.

Since I don't want to run Lucy in the ultra-distracting wide open ring until we are firmly back on track with each other, I limited my options of what runs to add for her on Sunday to what was offered in the enclosed ring. There were two Advanced Standards early in the afternoon, so that's what we did. I'm very glad I resisted the temptation to put her into Snooker as well - we need to keep far away from Snooker for a while yet. So anyway, for some reason, she ran around the first obstacle (or two) for both of today's runs. Weird! And there were other goofups too, like me forgetting she's a baby dog (in agility, not chronologically - she's almost 7) and needs a bit more guidance than Walter, and also some distracted moments. But really I'm sooooooooooo, sooooooooooo happy that she was happy out there! I love watching these videos and seeing her happy face on all her contacts and the table. YEAH!!! A far, far cry from her last time here (see link above).




This is the face Lucy wore all weekend. Relaxed and happy, tail a-waggin'.

What a fantastic weekend. This is the Lucy I once had, the Lucy in the photos at the top of this blog. I lost her for a long time, and dreamed of getting her back.

Dare I say it? I shall.

Lucy is BACK!!