Teamworks USDAA trial 9/12/09

Only one day this weekend as we’re gearing up for a very busy Fall trial season and I don’t want to wear him out before we even get started!  We entered 5 runs on Saturday which is the most we’ve ever done…kinda using it as a test to see how he’d do with such a long day.  Since we had such a successful weekend last weekend, we got to move up a level in nearly every run 🙂

First up was PIII Jumpers in the sand/grass ring (the owner planted grass on top of sand, but it’s not quite there yet).  The course was pretty challenging, but looked to be nice a fast.  Miles was totally excited to get out of the car and warm up for the run.  Of course just before I went to get him I realized that I had lost my keys!!  Fortunately, since I had left him in the car the windows were down enough for me to reach in and unlock the door.  I tried to concentrate on warming him up, but I couldn’t help being a bit distracted by the fact that I had no idea where my keys were.  As soon as we stepped to the line I forced myself to forget about it and we turned in an AWESOME run.  I do believe this is the fastest I’ve ever seen him in a trial!  Unfortunately, I over-rotated in a front cross near the end and pulled him off of a jump, dang!  I should have kept going (double dang) but I stopped to fix it.  Fortunately he got right back up to speed for a very nice finish.  How am I going to be able to stop correcting my mistakes???  I must.  Anyway, if you take out the time it took to correct the missed jump, he would have finished in 24-25 seconds or about 5.75yps!  I think there were a couple of spots that he put in an extra stride, but all in all it was pretty darn efficient!

After our run and post-run doggie swim pond cool down I set about trying to find my darn keys.  To make it worse, I had padlocked Rue into her crate since I left the back gate open and the padlock key was of course attached to the car keys.  I retraced my steps and narrowed it down to them having to be somewhere b/w my car and the portajohn….ew.  My friends and I searched and searched and had finally come to the determination that they were IN the toilet when I dejectedly told another friend of mine what had happened and she gleefully produced my keys that someone had found on the ground outside the portajohn.  Crisis averted, thank goodness!!

Next was PII Snooker.  I decided that I would listen to the briefing this time (heh) and then set about to find a flowing course.  Miles had a super run and we actually Q’d!  Funny too because I apparently DIDN’T listen to the briefing and took the #6 combo slightly out of flow in the opening to recieve zero points.  Good thing my others were #7 and #4 and we were fast enough to make it through the whole closing to squeek by with a whopping 41pts, haha!  One day I’ll listen 😉  Oh and the contacts here are newly rubbarized (not the teeter) so this was his first exposure to the a-frame and he could have cared less!

Our third run was PII Gamblers which had a pretty tough gamble where we needed to send out to the a-frame and layer a straight tunnel.  I thought we might have a chance if we got enough speed going into the gamble so that’s what I planned for.  I have to say I’m getting much better at predicting how much we can do in the opening although he still seems to get just a bit further then I think when the buzzer goes off.  I also wanted to get him on the rubber dogwalk and work the weave entry that followed since it was identical to the Standard course we were going to run.  Mission accomplished.  We had a spectacular opening, except for a teeter launch off for zero points–whoops!  However, when the buzzer sounded it caused Miles to pull of a jump and not give him as much of a good angle to the a-frame as I would have liked.  He took the close tunnel, but pushed out to the last two jumps.  Honestly, I never layer, so this was really to be expected.  I was just hoping that his contact suck would over ride my handling system, but it’s kinda good that it didn’t 😉 

PII Pairs was next and we were partnered with a cool Terv named Clover.  They took the first half and had a couple struggles with the weaves which I figured we could make up for with time, but then had an unfortunate off-course at the end.  I was very proud of Miles…not only did he have a picture perfect run, but he also had gotten spooked by something while we were waiting and then Clover came up behind him as we were getting ready to go and that spooked him too.  You wouldn’t have guessed it though once he got going!  My boy has truly come a remarkable way…..

Last, but not least, was PII Standard.  It seemed like a fun open course that would work well for us so I was pretty psyched to run it.  Being the last run of the day and the fact that he was a bit spooked in Pairs, I wasn’t totally certain what I’d get though.  Seems as though he did carry a little stress with him because he was a little more spooky during our warm up than he had been.  Either that or being a bit more tired allowed him to notice more “stuff” like the flapping umbrella over the timer/scribe.  I was totally totally impressed that he let it all go and still had gas to run this pretty darn well!  My goals were to have a quick down on the table and to not push him on the teeter for another fly-off.  Well the judge was a bit nitpicky on the table and I guess he weight shifted off the elbow closest to her so she stopped her count twice 😦  His teeter was great, but I think my hesitation there caused us a bar after the tunnel because I couldn’t get up there in time.  Not sure, but it was unfortunate.  Overall a super run for Mr. Man.

We have a welcomed break this weekend and then the madness begins…..