Sunday, March 7, 2010

Wichita Weekend 2010

Back, unpacked, fed, having a beer and blogging. What a great weekend! Had so much fun, even though the Q fairy isn't being very good to me. Harley got his first MX leg and it was a great run and Miller got a JWW Q today with an awesome run. Had a great dinner with friends on saturday night with $1.99 margaritas. You can't beat that for frozen peach margaritas! I needed one because I did not sleep at all Friday night and I so needed something to relax me enough to let me sleep. I am a very light sleeper, so light that Tony has stopped sleeping with me because he snores and i can't sleep. Unfortunately, we can't get two rooms at a hotel, so I have to sleep in the same room and I didn't sleep at all. I think Friday night I had maybe 3 hours of sleep but surprisingly had great runs on saturday.

For whatever reason, Miller decided that weave poles were overrated and popped the last pole in JWW and then somewhere in the middle of the poles in standard. I am still undecided as to what exactly is causing his latest weave issues. I use to crowd him in the weaves so I am trying to be very conscious of giving him tons of space while he is weaving. Just as I had done with the dog walk, he knows his job and I need to stay out of his way. Babysitting is what causes him to jump or pop so I have been drawing an imaginary line and trying to stay on the other side of the line and stay out if his way. I feel like I did this weekend but for whatever reason, he was popping the poles. He has had issues with 24 inch spaced poles in the past so I am hoping that he can get this spacing figured out before nationals. He did have great poles on sunday so maybe it is something else or maybe the fact that we are seeing this spacing on poles pretty much everywhere is helping him figure it out.

We did get a Q in jumpers today and I am very happy with that Q. I was undecided at to whether practice some rear crosses since that is our weakness or to push him hard and do pretty much all fronts. Lori had told me to push since every run at nationals needs to be pushed so I listened and pushed him. He usually gets between 7 and 9 points in JWW and I am happy to say he got 10 this time! I am so proud of this big red, 11 year old dog!

I loved all of my runs this weekend even with the popped poles, other than my standard run this morning. I got miller out way to early and i think he got really stressed and started sniffing and not paying attention which is not like him. He did this at AKC nationals when I got him out super early so I need to not do that anymore if I can help it. Let's just say the whole start of the run was a big cluster f*ck. Once we got through the chute (7th obstacle), we ran fine, even getting in a nice blind cross off of the a-frame and a great dog walk contact.

Just to mention Tony and Harley, they had a great standard run today with a Q and also a very nice JWW run that wasn't a Q. Harley was pretty wild in JWW saturday and I ran him in standard in which I pulled him off for a blown a-frame contact. I so hoped Tony would get his first QQ today, but harley locked in on an off-course tunnel in JWW and blew tony off to go get it. Dang Harley! He is still looking great and for not having class or any practice since November, they are doing surprisingly well.



No comments:

Post a Comment