First Trial of the Year (Chatham)

Jerry "The Mighty Quinn" waiting at the gate

This weekend we opened up our trial season at the Y Agility Chatham Trial up in UP-UP-UPSTATE NY. ( I feel like I live upstate so you know what I mean.) We had a fabulous time. We rented a little cottage not too far from the site that was dog friendly and so myself- Tom, Jerry, my dad with Smartie, my friend Lauren aka "supervet" with her two dogs Hailey and Roo and another friend JoAnna and her mom and dog Nemo all shared a 3BR, 3Bath cottage that was transformed from an old barn to an awesome living space. Yes 5 adults and 6 dogs if you calculated correctly!





The dogs had a blast with 123 acres of meadow to roam and play, they were all in heaven and slept wonderfully both nights without too much noise. There were also several ponds that Smartie decided she needed to swim in (definitely a golden!) so she was not allowed off leash after her little swim adventure.

"Flying across the seesaw"

As for this weekend's stats- Smartie has improved greatly and won several placement ribbons but her biggest achievement was doing the dogwalk successfully and not refusing any obstacles. She also knocked down only a few bars which is so great too. My dad was a vry positive influence on her this weekend. He kept her happy and motivated.





Nemo had a good weekend too. Tom and Nemo were paired together in Pairs with Joanna and I of course and they missed qualifying by 0.44. What a bummer. We both ran it clean with only minor weave pole issues and with the most perfect baton exchange. We felt like true Olympians. We even practiced the exchange before we ran. At least we both had a good first run and since we didn't qualify we get to run together again until we do qualify.





This was Hailey and Lauren's first trial and Hailey exhibited some first trial jitters. Especially since we were lost Sat am and didn't get there until four minutes before she had to go into the ring and Lauren hadn't walked the course or really had anytime to study a map. Hailey did some obstacles and then jumped over into the next ring. Thankfully the dog there just finished running. Hailey had some nice jumps in the Jumpers class too. She is ready for next weekend!





Tom was so "fabulous" this weekend. He is truly a changed dog after last spring's drama in the ring. He held 98% of his criteria this weekend and ended up qualifying 4 out of 6 runs. However every run he ran was CLEAN- not one dropped bar, not one off course, not one missed contact.


The two runs we didn't Q in were because of time faults but when you take extra seconds to make sure your dog perfects every contact or when they have minor weave pole issues that is what you get.





Finally my Jerry was such a sport this weekend. Although he is still to young to compete, he gets so excited when we enter a trial arena and he sees the other dogs. He gets so hyped up. Fortunately this weekend they were doing some fun runs as a fundraiser and we could enter any dog so I put Jerry in two runs and he was great. No, he is nowhere near ready (because of age, maturity and skill) but we got to practice out in a real ring in trial atmosphere and he got to practice his sit-stay, some contacts and he got to RUN RUN RUN. That is what Jerry likes to do most is run.





My friend Michele who is a very skilled photographer borrowed my camera and took these awesome shots of my J-Monkey in action. I was a very lazy photographer this weekend and didn't take too many photos and because the dogs are so fast and I am not skilled in photo skills- the pics are not even worth sharing.

"I made my contact!"