Another trial weekend, Day 1

Well the weekend was spent doing another trial. This time UKI.  I haven't done any  UKI since November's Nationals.  Its just hard to find the time and there aren't as many trials as  with other venues.  I only entered Java, Miley is still on rest. 
I love UKI.  So many fun courses to run. To bad my friends all do AKC.  If they just tried these other venues, they would see how fun they are.  I did get one person, who has only done AKC, to come but she just entered standard and jumpers.  You can do day of show entries and I tried to get her to do other classes but she wouldn't.

Anyway it was really hot and humid. Luckily it was mostly cloudy which I think helped keep things from becoming miserable.  I did bring my Arctic cooling misting fan. It got lots of attention, people wanted demonstrations and asking where I got it.   It does help when its so hot outside.

This is an older picture. I now have one of those big orange water coolers that I take with me , filled with water.  I sit it on top of it and it works great.

We had multiple storms come through during the day. It would rain and then clear up again.

This was during one of the light rain storms.

This trial was very small but I felt lucky that he was able to rent this arena and its under cover.
We entered Gamblers, Snakes and Ladders. Beginner agility, Beginner jumpers and Master series jumpers.
 Boy these were tough courses. I felt bad that the courses were so hard because my friend is still pretty new to trialing. But mostly I wanted her to come for the training in the ring .  Her dog is having trouble with getting on the contact obstacles. He is great in class and then refuses at trials.


Java is still in beginners but here is the Championship course. Boy it was tough. It didn't look like to many dogs ran clean.

Here was the first class, Gamblers.

UKI  gamblers has two gamble options. The easier one is worth 10 points, the harder one was worth 15.

Java did good but missed the easier gamble (the white circles). She missed the #3 jump when she came out of the tunnel.








I ran Snakes and Ladders for the first time. It was fun and we Qed.

Kind of a crazy game. You have to run all the contact and weave in the direction away from the start line and you have to do all the tunnel in the direction of coming toward the start line.  If you dog accidently does them in the wrong direction, you are whistled off. You also have to do 6 jumps. All of this has to be done in 55 seconds, I think.    You plan your own course. You can do the obstacles again in the correct direction but you don't get anymore points and you are wasting time.  Java did 9, 11 and then #1dogwalk but missed the contact. If you miss the contact , you don't get the points. So I put her through the #8 tunnel and did the dogwalk again. This time she hit the contact and got the points.   I did the tunnel again to bring us to the weaves.  Doing the tunnel again didn't get us anymore points but I did it in the correct direction and I was just using it to get to the weaves, so we were ok.  We got through the rest of the course and Qed. Whoohoo!!


 I messed up the standard agility run, ugh.
 Right before this jumpers run we had a bad thunderstorm. It was raining when we were walking the course. Then a bad down pour. We had to leave the walk thur and go get the dogs and move all our stuff because the rain was driving in. Most of my stuff was soaked.

After the walk thur, I got Java out of her crate. She was in a plastic crate but still was pretty wet from the rain storm. And she was freaked out. It was thundering and the rain on the metal roof was loud. She refused to move several times while I was warming her up. I told my friend, she isn't going to run, she is to freaked out. Even when we went to walk to the ring, she sat down and refused to move. I had to  pull on the leash. We went into the ring and I was still thinking "she isn't going to run, she is to freaked".  But as soon as I took the leash off, I could tell she was ready. Forget what ever was happening outside the ring, she was fired up.  I needed a bigger lead out but was scared she would break, so I just released her. Whoohoo, we Qed!!






Last up was Master series jumpers.  Man we were so close to a Q.  She cut behind me coming out of the weaves and took the wrong side of  jump #6.  I need a tattoo on my arm that says , "Watch your Dog".  LOL

 I blinded #2 to #3. That was the only way I could think that I could beat her out of that tunnel to get the back side of the #4 jump.  Yes it worked.   This run felt better than it looks on video.





I drove home that night and got home around 8pm.  I was beat.