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Friday, November 12, 2010

Champs Trip: Part II

Oooh, the eagerly awaited part II! (Yeah, right.)

First, a montage of Blue's SilverStakes runs set to music.



Okay, so after we left Gillette, we drove. And drove. And drove. We did stop at some interesting sites. On the first day, we stopped by the Mammoth Site in South Dakota. We stayed that night at a pretty little campground in 'Middle of Nowhere,' Nebraska. The pond and trees in the morning were beautiful.

From there we headed into Ord, Nebraska, where my grandfather grew up and is buried. We stayed the day at a park with campsites. Sirius got to play in a little creek nearby. The other dogs weren't too interested in getting wet, haha.

We pulled into Purina Farms the day before the event. Very large and very nice facility (at least for a weekend). I was amazed at how many fields there. Lovely grass, too. Oh, so we had to dump the tanks in our trailer and went to this really pretty state park a little bit away. It was really, really pretty.

So, as nice as Purina Farms is, it wasn't perfect, at least for an Agility Championship event. As of our trip, 2011 NADAC Champs was potentially going to be held in the brand new indoor facility there. First, there was no dump site at the facility, second, there were very few sites with full hook-ups, if any. That's just the camping. The indoor facility's uber expensive flooring did not impress any of the competitors. We didn't run on it, but none of us would have let our dogs run on it. There was no cushion either. I've heard more unhappy comments elsewhere and one could probably find them if they wanted. There are rumors that Purina is attempting to find a temporary surface they could roll out for agility events. Although, from what I've been hearing, Champs is not going to be there next year.

Well, the PIDC was fun. Friday we got to do our two practice runs, and then had dinner. There was a video presentation after dinner for all the competitors, that was basically a recap of the regional events.

Blue wasn't as clean on this course as the Regional one. She ran only one round clean each set. I was a little late on the turn on the practice run. Interesting course, though. Here's her runs. The music they had isn't as good as the ones I got on the other runs. :)

Here's a video of her practice runs. I'll save the 'real' ones for the TV special (if we get on.) I don't remember the exact date it's supposed to air, but I remember it was in January before the NFL playoffs.


I'll just mention what happened on our 'official' runs. Well, first off, that morning Blue got out of the trailer and ran over to the truck, as if to say, "I'm ready to go home now." I'm thinking, "That's not a good sign." Well, she did seem okay during her runs, but she decided to have an issue with a jump that'd I'd seen another dog have problems with, but Blue was fine with on both practice runs. Ugh. So she ran one round with a couple of faults and the other clean. She was tenths of hundredths of a second over the third place dogs time. I really can't figure out how I could have gotten a much faster time out of her, except for handling differently in one spot. (You know that turn she missed the on the first practice run?) Oh, the good thing was I didn't have to do another interview.

Well, Blue wanted to go home, and we got to go home. The trip home wasn't particularly interesting. It was quite stormy in a lot of places. We were quite happy and relieved to be home when we arrived.

Here's a montage of our trip!



And some photos!



2 comments:

  1. LOVE your montages! You have a knack for getting the right music, pictures and video together :) Congrats again on all of your successes with Champs and PIDC!

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  2. Thanks! I wouldn't consider myself the best at the montage type videos, but the more I do it, better they get.

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