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Sunday, April 17, 2011

MAC NADAC April 16

We did one day of a NADAC trial. It was hot. The dogs weren't the most into it.

Blue was odd. She's actually been acting odd at practice for the last couple of weeks (which she hasn't been doing much at). We took her to the vet to get vaccinated last week, and had her looked at because my mom was concerned about her weight and how firm her abdomen felt. At the vet she weighed 34 lbs! Last time we were there, she weighed 32 and even that was heavy. We usually like her around 29-30. We started feeding the dogs raw full time at the end of December, and supplementing it with Honest Kitchen Preference, which is just a mix of dehydrated fruits and veggies. So we think this might have been the issue, since there were quite a few extra calories or there is something she has an allergy to. Anyway, she doesn't seem as swollen since we stopped feeding it last week (and the scale at home even said she weighed 32 lbs again).

One other factor that might have contributed to her weirdness is that I found a huge lump at one site where she was vaccinated. Ugh, stupid vaccines. It wasn't as bad as her rabies shot a few years ago when she could barely even run it hurt so bad and she cried when you touched it. She wasn't flinching or anything when I was touching this one. She also didn't seem to want to leave yesterday morning. I don't know if she didn't understand we were really leaving or what. I dunno what is up with her.

Anyway, she only Qd 2 runs, and both were not pretty (one Regular and a Jumpers). She/I were making the same mistakes as most of the other people, and I was usually able to fix my handling for Tru. I felt much more connected to Blue and our runs were much more flowing on our NQs. I hate fixing things. Blue did not want to do distance very much, even on things where I wasn't that far away. She also ticked quite a few bars in Jumpers and even ran by a jump. I did not say 'over' or 'go', but she knows how to take things when I am clearly showing her the path. So that was odd. All I can think is she didn't feel good going by how she was running. I'm hoping that if I get some weight off her and that maybe she still needs to get some of whatever was in the Preference flushed out, she will feel better next trial.

Tru was pretty good despite the heat, and earned 4 Qs out of 5 runs. She also finished qualifying for NADAC Champs! Pretty good for her first trial in Elite (except TnG). She popped out of both 12 sets of weaves, even though she nailed all of them back in February. She was nearly over time on the second round of Regular and her only big mistake was popping out of the weaves. There were a couple wide turns that probably took a couple seconds, but I was surprised at how close she was to an NQ. I haven't run an Elite dog in a Standard jump height for so long, I didn't realized how tight times are. Blue's in Vet so she gets more time, and she was in JH for almost her whole career, so she always had extra time. Tru's gonna have to step it up speed wise. Well, I just need to be a tighter handler.

Sirius didn't run at all this weekend. She was limping last Friday and continued to for a few days after that. We weren't sure if she hurt her self or not, but then realized the same day she started limping was the same day they got vaccinated. So we figure that's probably the reason she was limping. Fortunately she doesn't seem to be limping anymore, but we are watching her.



Random other note. Tru's AF at the end of the video was kind of funny. She flew up it and didn't seem to realize how fast she was going. She landed pretty far down for her and was scrambling to stop. I think she figured out how much she little had to work on the AF for the rest of the day.

Hopefully the girls will all feel better in a few weeks when we have another NADAC trial. It's also more local, so we wont have to get up at 4 am. Maybe they were just tired? And hot.

2 comments:

  1. Weird...all those courses were the exact same courses we ran at a trial in Montana last weekend. I didn't realize that they used whole trial courses over for other trials. Nice runs btw!

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  2. Haha, yeah I've heard they all come out of a 'book.' I'm pretty sure I saw them in a video a few weeks ago from another part of the country too. Thanks!

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