Once again, as with last year driving back, moms driving and I am bored so thought I would blog. Another nationals done with, well for Miller anyway. This was a tough nationals as it was miller’s last year to compete. I talked about it a little in the other blog post, but this really was the first year that Miller was not competitive and it kind of sucked. More and more Bcs in performance both in 22 inches and 16, which made it so hard for our older dogs to beat those blazing fast times. True that there were older dogs too but even on our best run of the weekend, we only got 14th place. I kind of dread being in championship in a way because we just won’t have a chance in hell of ever getting into any of the finals due to the fact that Deuce is just not fast enough. He has shown me some speed but not BC beating speed. I am a very competitive person so it will be a huge bitter pill to take but I am ready. I look forward to running Deuce at nationals because the mistakes that I made where due to lack of proper training in Miller in the beginning, before I knew what I was doing really. Miller has never had independent weaves so any movements I make tend to pull him out of the poles or push him out. I also don’t trust his poles and he knows that so he is always looking at me and I am always looking at him which tends to put me out of position at times. I know it bit me in the butt in standard and also in grand prix. Deuce doesn’t even know I exist when he is weaving and I LOVE that. He also doesn’t care where I am when he is doing contacts which would eliminate me having to do any weird crosses like I had to do in standard as well. I look to the future of my showing career and am very excited, can you tell?
Today we ran jumpers and that was it and boy was it a tricky course. I felt like we started out well but he popped out of the weave poles again, at the beginning of them. Someone said he slipped as he just skipped two poles but I am not sure what happened. I don’t think he was reacting to anything I was doing as we had just started and I don’t think the poles were rocking that hard. We finished the run well after I got him back in with a double front cross on the back line of the course and a rear to a blind (yeah my ass was running to get that one). Someone said I looked discombobulated but when I watched the tape, I don’t think it was that bad. We ended on a pretty good note (still on kind of a high from snooker last night) and I am overall happy with the way he ran. He is slowing down a tiny bit but when I run full out, he does too. He gave me 110% on every run and I can’t ask for more. I wish we had a veterans program in USDAA so I could continue to do USDAA with him but I am not sure how much longer I want to jump him at 22 inches. I love going to USDAA nationals, a lot more so than AKC nationals but I just don’t know if I want to do as much per day anymore, especially if I do keep him at 22 inches for a little while longer to finish his top title.
I will say that I did enjoy having the nationals in KY, mainly because it is so close and my friends are there so we can stay with them. I will say that we will probably rent an RV if we come back, even if it means driving two hours in an RV. It was tough getting up so early to beat the rush hour traffic and then sitting at the arena for hours with nothing really to do other than spend money. I think poor miller got super tired of being in his crate to as he did not want to go back in it several times and that is very unlike Miller. The 12 hour day was the worst and I NEVER want to have to do that again to him or me! I do feel like the facility needs to get a handle on the dust problem. Several days went by with the arena starting out muddy and then ending up a dust pit. I got a great pic of the dust one day as it was hazing the whole place up. I do like having the seating around the main rings so you can see versus Arizona where you have to sit on the ground or drag your chairs out and finals is very limited seating as well. I do like that the crating space was in the middle of the two arenas and within reasonable walking distance to both rings. I was fortunate that I did not have any walk-throughs that were back to back so I didn’t have to run back and forth from ring to ring since the rings were separated by the large crating area. I do know that next year, I will spend the money to have two crating spots with my teammate instead of sharing one. While we all fit, it was tight and if we both had big dogs, we wouldn’t have fit very well. Overall, other than the very long day, everything seemed to run pretty smoothly and I didn’t hear a lot of complaining. I think the atmosphere was lacking but it is hard to really have atmosphere inside. You can’t beat the scenery in AZ for sure and it was nice to be able to see the dock dog diving and lure coursing from the arenas and crating area. I will miss going to nationals next year but I just don’t think I want to do that to Miller again. Long days in a crate are just not kind to him. He will be 12 this year and I think it is time to start scaling back my expectations of what we are goin got do. I feel like he is still running great, but for how long, I don’t know. He has taken me to so many places I never thought I would be. He has shown me the correct and incorrect way to train an agility dog and he has made me a better agility handler. He is an honest dog and I couldn’t have asked for a better teacher. While I want to strangle him sometimes and kick myself in my own ass at others, we have had one hell of an agility ride together and I look forward to starting the next journey with my baby. I am sure Miller will be whispering in his ear, “mom really likes it when you blow your dog walk contact”J
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