What happened at the PIDC

You probably would have heard me blabbing right away if we won. XD The agility is up on barknetwork now, so if you'd like to see our runs, go there. I dunno if I will even bother putting them up on YT. Well, maybe I will.

Anyway, Blue and I placed 3rd, yippee! (barknetwork's results say Truly got third, haha!) We don't have to go to Purina Farms this year and I didn't have to do an interview. My parents are sick of going with me to dog events (I think I've said this before), so I would have had to figure out some other way of getting there. (Like is happening with NADAC Champs.) I'm happy for the winners and hope they go have fun in St. Louis.

As for Blue's runs, she had a very nice first run. Only a slight bobble coming out of the tunnel under the DW. I called her just a little too hard. Second one was awful. I felt so bad making her run. She started shaking her head right as she went into the first tunnel and pulled off the weave poles. She pulled of some other stuff later, and I just went on. We were the last team to run, so we were already in third place for sure, so I was like, no need to go back out. (I'm dreading that run being aired. I wish it didn't turn out like that.) Poor dog. I was holding out hope that morning that her ears would be better, and she was fine all morning until just before our first run. >.<

Tru got to go play on Sunday. They had a demo show because the fair asked them to and it was just a fun exhibition thing. Truly was so crazy the first couple of runs. She didn't have the benefit of practicing for two days before like the other dogs. After the first two shows we went in the ring and practice between the shows (there were three demos). She did so good on the last run after doing a bit of practice. She missed the AF all three runs. On the first two, I brought her back and she did them. On the last one she said, 'Heck no' and we just went on. Smart dog. She had been clean and smooth up to that point. She is such a baby dog and this was a good experience. I know a bit more how she will react to a 'big' event or just one with more things going on than a normal trial. Also, Tru looks so much better at 12".

Anyway, no trials scheduled until late August (NADAC). I dunno if I will enter any AKC trials, since Tru would be the only one going. My mom keeps talking about going to a CPE trial, but we'll see.

Incredible Dog Challenge Tomorrow!

Blue and I are competing at the PIDC tomorrow. They're live streaming it at BarkNetwork starting at 2 pm Eastern time (and our schedule says agility starts at 11:30 am Pacific).

We got to practice today and it was...interesting. Blue was a good girl and spunky and happy. Before we got to the chute. I think it jostled some gunk in her ear and she started uncontrollably shaking her head 2/3s of the way through the course.

She seemed a little weird after going through the chute the first time, as she pulled off the jump after it. Then she shook her head on the AF (after taking an off course), which was the second to the last obstacle. She continued to shake her head occasionally and tilt her ears funny while waiting for our second turn. As I said, she got most of the way through the course, before she had to be taken off. I watched the video and she shook her head right after she got out of the chute on the second round. So she came out of a tunnel and I had to go get her and pick her up because she couldn't really walk straight. Poor girl.

The onsite vet checked her out and couldn't see anything because he didn't bring any thing to look with. :/ We had to take her to our normal vet, which luckily takes walk in patients. The vet was pretty busy, but we needed to get this checked out. Turns out it's just a 'wax plug' covering her ear drum. The vet thought it might be pressing on it and that's what was bothering her. We put some ear wash and anti-inflammatory in there and hopefully she'll be better tomorrow. One of her ears is sensitive anyway and occasionally I'll hit it the 'right' way and get a reaction, but usually she stops after a minute. Anyway, she was very happy to be at the event and loved all the activity and people like normal.

JCAC NADAC Jan. 15-16, 2011

First trial of the new year. Wooh.

Yeah, so this trial didn't have the greatest feel for our dogs. Don't quite know what was up, but all the dogs seemed off, especially on Saturday. On top of that, I find out that Blue and I happened to be one of the two agility teams cut out. Dunno what we did wrong, but we got fourth, yet they show the fifth place dog instead. All I can think is I either forgot do do something, or I didn't look very interesting doing distance work. Kind of a bummer there.

Blue ended up with 4 Qs over the whole weekend. Silly girl messed up on two runs where I didn't do lines, including her senior moment in Chances. It's like she forgot I said "tunnel" while she was doing the jump, lol. She also blew a discrimination at the beginning of a Regular run.

I didn't leave any of her weird runs in here, but most of the line attempts were strange, so I was/am worried about her. I'm gonna try to get her into the chiropractor soon. I'm also wondering about her hearing. When she was young, she got something in one of her ears and the vet said it scratched the inside and there might be some scar tissue that could cause issues. She's also nine now. Does anyone know anything about hearing tests?

Random bonus line bits. I loved her try in Regular round 4. I felt so connected and the run was so smooth. Also, I think I'm going to really cut down on the amount of special skills lines we try, just to cut down on the bonus lines. She could still do Regular, Jumpers and Chance because those count for a "normal" Silver Achievement Cup. Of course if the course looked like something we really had the potential to get, I'd try it, but if there's something I'm really (or maybe a little) unsure about, I wont do it.



Now, Tru on the other hand, Qd 7 runs. She got 3 more Regular Qs and a Weavers Q towards Champs, her first Elite Qs and finished her HP-O. One more trial to go and we could have a year long Q streak in Chances, woot!

Unfortunately, I noticed Tru's jumping seemed a little off. She knocked a bar in each Jumpers round. I was looking and it seems like she is trying to push of with her front and I don't really think that's a good thing. I'm gonna try working with her on it some, while trying to work her rear end a little more.



Sirius only Qd two runs and I didn't feel like posting video. My mom's going through another "I'm retiring Sirius" phase. We'll see how long that lasts. Sirius will magically be good for a couple trials. I'm attempting to convince her to try and finish Siri's Elite Versatility at least, lol.

So not the best start to the beginning of the year. Hopefully, the next trial will turn out a little happier. Well, the next trial is one run of AKC with Tru, so I mean the next NADAC trial, lol. Oh, and you can watch the whole PIDC and my runs separately at http://www.barknetwork.com/

PIDC Air Date and Time

I just wanted to let everyone who cares know that the Purina Incredible Dog Challenge National Championships air nation wide this Saturday at 3:30 pm EST on NBC. Hopefully Blue and I made the cut, seeing as we were 4th out of 5 dogs, haha.

http://barknetwork.com/

Haha.

I just found this on barknetwork.com. Check out who's on the thumbnail. Also, the date they're airing the PIDC Championships is Jan. 15th, 2011 on NBC.

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!

2010 Purina Incredible Dog Challenge Western Regional

As you might have seen in my my last Wordless Wednesday post (or read the twitter feed on the side of my blog), Blue and I competed at the Purina Incredible Dog Challenge Western Regional.

All I can say is that we had an incredibly fun time at the event. Blue liked that she got to play agility and it was tons of fun to hang out with people I trial with, some acquaintances, and a new face or two. There were a bunch of NADAC competitors running at the event. Almost the whole large dog division was comprised of handlers that run NADAC. The small dog group was about half NADAC competitors. The judge was also a NADAC judge.

I guess I'll talk about our runs a bit. I believe Blue was the only dog to run all the rounds clean, including the two practice runs. I ran it two ways both times and the second round that I handled mostly from the center ran faster both days.

Here's video of our practice runs. I think the music on the first one is amusing as I had just used that song on our most recent trial vid.

Here's a music video I did of all the NADAC people (at least the ones my mom knew were ran NADAC and bothered to film). Yes, there are results shown, so spoiler alert for those that want to wait until it airs! The schedule for when it will be on TV is here.

Yes, Blue and I won the small dog division! How awesome is that! We get to go to St. Louis, for the Championship in Oct. The only issue I am having is how to schedule school with NADAC Champs one weekend and then the PIDC the next weekend.

So that was our "incredible" experience. Be sure to look out for us on TV in the coming months!

In non-PIDC news, I have a NADAC trial this coming weekend with Blue only and in July I am running both dogs in an AKC trial.

Wordless Wednesday