Should I stay or should I go.

That was the theme for the weekend trial. LOL.   I laugh now but its not really funny.    She just didnt want to hold a start line or contacts.  Ugh, it was stressing me out.  I dont want her to stress in the ring but I dont want to be stressed either. 
First up was Exc. Jww.  You will see in the video, that she creeps all the way to the 1st bar. I released her and figured she would drop that first bar. But she didnt.  We actually Qed. For the first time in excellent jumpers.  We've only run exc. jww about 40 plus times ( two years)  and we finally Qed. I sure hope it doesnt take another 40 times to Q again. 

Next up was open standard.  She jumped the  dogwalk contact and I thought she stressed because of that but after watching the video I think she saw we were going to the table. Ugh.  This was a rough run, you may not want to watch it. Its hard to watch, at least for me.




The next  day started with T2B.  We usually do well in this class.

I timed for the big dogs.  Lots of dogs went into the wrong end of the tunnel even when the handler was really cuing the correct entrance. It was  weird.  Jump # 9-10 got a lot of dogs too. They went straight and over the a-frame. It doesnt look tight  from 9-10 but it was. Big dogs probably had one stride in between jumps there.  I didnt get this run on video  but we got the correct tunnel entrance but she jumped her a-frame contact. Then I was so worried about 9-10 that I pulled to early and pulled her off 10 . Ugh.  The rest went well.  I was so disappointed after this run.  Jumping that a-frame contact  just was so upsetting. Im not sure why. That standard run yesterday was 10 times worse than this run but it really got me down.  So I thought I would leave and go to a park. I had 5 hours until my next run. So while I was driving to the park my mom called. My grandfather had passed away during the night.  Its wasnt unexpected. He was tried of living. He just wanted to die.  He was 90 years old and his body wouldnt do what he wanted it to , so he felt like whats the point. So he just stopped eating.  I felt really bad for my  mom.  She was crying and I wanted to go see her. But I was pretty far away and had dogs with me. I told her I could come Monday but she said a storm was coming in land so it was to dangerous to come.   After I was done talking to my mom, I took the dogs to this park that pretty close to the trial. They added a dock on the water , so I took a few pictures.

 If you had dogs that like water, it would be a pretty go place to go. Except you would need to keep a lead on your dog, it looked like the current was strong. Then I started walking the path.  There was a  guy  walking ahead of me and he turned around and started walking toward me.  It was pretty deserted. He asked me if my dogs would bite him. (Weird question. Also , not to long ago  this lady was running  with her dog at a park in the upstate of South Carolina. This guy came over to her and checked out if her dog was friendly. Then he beat her and raped her)   So I told the guy I didnt think my dogs would bite but they do have teeth and they are dogs. Then Java started barking at him. So that took care of that.   I walked a little further but the grass needed to be cut and I was worried about snakes so I turned around. I decide to go to this other park. I think it was called Fletcher Community Park. I had been there before but they have really expanded it. It was awesome.  We had a great time.

Thats  where I took that picture at the beginning of my post.

I wish I had brought my water shoes. I took my shoes off and just walked in the water barefoot.

There was several places that dogs could swim.  Tons of walking paths. This was my kind of park. The path I chose to walk was almost always shaded. I felt so much better about everything after being at this park. It was just what my soul needed.

I went back to the trial. I ran Open standard next. I knew that Loretta wanted me to leave the ring if Miley stressed .But I also knew that I needed to mark Miley jumping these contacts or she is just going to keep doing it. Ugh!!  So I knew I had to mark it and I knew she would stress.  When you watch the video  you will see what happens.  I marked jumping the a-frame contact with "hey".  Not harsh or anything. But Miley stressed. Then she came around and got back on the a-frame. I told the judge "sorry".  I thought she  was going to whistle me out of the ring but she didnt.  You will see miley did all the rest of her contact correctly.  And I made her get on the table. I'm not sure if any of this was the right thing to do but it is what it is.

Next up was Exc. Jumpers.  Im not sure what happened here. I slowed the video down.  She takes off way to early on jump #6 and crashed on the bars.  I thinks she was going to stress after that but I got her back. Into the pinwheel, she missed two jumps. I have no idea why. If you see something I did let me know. So no Q there. LOL, that was short lived.


Also, on Sunday, I decieded to take the leash off early before they said "ready". To give her  and me a little more time to settle before I lead out. I was hoping it would give her a chance to relax and not creep so much. But after watching the video it looks like Im looming over her. Maybe I need to give her more space.



I met Sarah from the blog world. She runs kate, http://keraleskate.blogspot.com/, an awesome dog.  And she had one of her other dogs, Java , with her.  She was pretty great too!!