This weekend, Baxter and I entered our first AKC Agility Trial. It was much larger than the UKC event we entered in November (our very first agility trial ever.) We entered Saturday and Sunday in Time to Beat (Sat only,) Jumpers with Weaves, and Standard.

Time to Beat (T2B) (no video) was the first run. I was really excited about this because I don't care if we get a T2B title. It seems like not all events have this one, so I thought it was be a good first run to get all the nervousness out. We actually didn't do that badly. But because there are no refusals allowed and we missed our weave entrance, we NQ'd. It was pretty funny though that Baxter went in incorrectly, but when I called him back to me he turned right back into the weaves (correctly) and weaved his way back to me. That will definitely be something we have to work on later. Back-chaining can be a very bad thing. Oh, and Baxter broke his start. I put him in a sit/stay and turned my back on him (my bad, should have kept eye contact) and moved over to the first tunnel entrance. As I was about to turn around, there he was in front of me! It took me a second to grasp what happened, and the I yelled, "TUNNEL!" Into the tunnel he went and we were off to try to complete the course. =) Other than that, the course wasn't too bad and he did fairly well considering we didn't qualify. One thing that I realized after the run was that I did not take Baxter out to practice sit/stays. I think this really affected his performance because he wasn't "in the zone."

Jumpers with Weaves (JWW) (video) was our next run. I took Baxter out early to do sit/stays and during the course change we practiced on the practice jump outside the ring. He did really well and paid attention good. The course was not too difficult, although I saw a couple of traps that could be trouble. I did not think that the 90 degree turn into the weaves would be a problem, but they were. We practice weaves all the time, so I didn't think it would be an issue. Because we were at the novice level, we were allowed three attempts at the weaves. In the first entrance attempt, Baxter went in too far. The second time, I backed up and he went in the same way again. I must have been channeling my trainer because the third and last time, I moved back REALLY far and he came up to it and got into it properly. After that, everything went smoothly. Even the trouble area turned out to be ok, and we Q'd. 37 seconds. Perfect run. First place.

The Standard course (video) that day looked really easy. I was super exicted to try it out. When we ran it, it was so smooth. No weave entrance problems. So traps. We finished and I was so happy, only to learn that we didn't complete the bottom dog walk contact. Looking back at the footage, I did not come forward enough to the yellow part of the contact. While I didn't turn my shoulders away, I stopped moving and allowed Baxter to jump down in front of me. During the walk though I knew I needed to keep my shoulders straight and not turn away from the dog walk, but I guess in the heat of the run, I forgot to make sure to run to the end of it. Baxter wasn't even running that fast on the dog walk either, so it would not have been hard for me to make it to the end before him. Ah well. Lesson learned. NQ.

Saturday was a cold and very very windy day, and the event was outside with no cover. Sunday turned out to be not only cold, but wet and during JWW, rainy. That morning, the whole weather situation made me think about that Seinfeld episode where Kramer over hears two guys on the subway talking about a "sure thing" in an upcoming horse race and made me wonder if Baxter was going to turn out to be a mudder:

"This horse loves the slop. He's a mudder. His father was a mudder. "

-"His father was a mudder?"

"His mother was a mudder."

-"His mother was a mudder?"

The Standard course on Sunday (video) was great. The was the dog walk heading straight into a jump so I didn't need to try to apply my lesson from the day before. However, the weaves were right after the chute, so I thought that might be a problem, but to my surprise it wasn't! He totally rocked the course and we Q'd. 41 seconds. Perfect run. First place.

Jumpers with Weaves (video) was the last run of the day. It was Excellent to Novice and Big to Small, so we were just about dead last. Thankfully the rain that had started was still coming down, so we didn't get to miss out on that. >< The course had pin wheels in just about every corner, and the weaves were right after a curved tunnel. But no sign of any true traps. Baxter was awesome with all the jumps and listening to me direct him. Looking back at the video, it would have been a good idea to try to give him an "easy" or "wait" command coming out of the tunnel so he could collect himself before hitting the weaves. He sort of popped out at an angle and I that might have counted toward one of our attempts on the weaves. Either way, it makes me more likely to do really do a "his point of view" walk through of the course. So rainy JWW left us with another Q. 28 seconds. Perfect run. First place with my mudder.

Our next trial will be in March at another UKC event. It should be interesting because now we will be competing in the AGII level. I'm very excited about it, except we need to start practicing the box. Instead of using a table the course could have a box in its place. It's kind of hard for a dog to jump on a table and come to a complete stop, but it seems ever harder for them to step into a pvc pipe box frame and come to a complete stop. Hopefully training goes well for that. =)