AARF NADAC Trial Day 2

The second day of the trial went OK. The Judge ended up getting sick in the middle of the trial and luckily, two of the participants were NADAC judges so they took over. I volunteered more today. It actually gets to be a long day if you just sit around waiting to run. Since I live so close to Teamworks, I actually drove home for an hour. I could have stayed home longer but I am paranoid about missing a run. By the time the trial finished it was 6:30 pm.

They ran the courses in reverse order today, with the regular runs last. Clover and I still had 3 runs, but ran tunnelers instead of jumpers. I wish we would have signed up for jumpers on Sunday too, but when we entered, we had never competed and didn't know how Clover would handle more runs.

Here are the course maps...

Clover had a lot of fun on the tunnelers course... a little to much fun. She was running full bore the entire course. I was worried about getting her to make the left turn between tunnels 4 and 5 but the trouble was between tunnels 7 and 8. She hit tunnel seven like a rocket and she was in tunnel 1 before I knew what happened. I have been standing between the tunnels were a turn needs to be made and using the turn command. I need to use right and left more and start earlier, as soon as she is committed to the tunnel before the turn. Clover had fun though and we still placed 3rd even though we didn't Q. My wife said that I need to yell her name or stop or something when she is going toward the wrong obstacle to get her attention, but as fast as she is going, I was only able to get turn, turn out before she was through the tunnel. I just have to give her the command earlier and clearer. ...OK, it sums up to I was late...

Novice A regular 1 course was interesting. She didn't Q, but placed 1st. I was so concerned about her making her contacts that I focused on the A frame's contact and making her wait. ...but she didn't wait and ran straight ahead to tunnel 12. I wasn't prepared so I didn't have time to turn her. When she left the A-frame my feet were pointed to the tunnel. ...Ok, to sum it up again, I was late...

In the Novice A regular 2 course... It was a contact problem. On obstacle 2, the dogwalk, I think she missed the contact, and I brought her back..stupid me. Since this was the last class, I don't know what the judge called. ... but I think I was eliminated... Remind me not to train in the ring! Clover ran the rest of the course really well though, if we weren't eliminated for training she would have gotten the gamble, which were jumps 6,7 and 8. I have only done the jump gambles. Not the contatct gambles. I will have to see how the judge called it after they e-mail me the results.

Overall, I was happy with the weekend. Clover earned her first title, the NGC, or Novice gamblers title. In this trial, It was obvious that most of the mistakes were made by me, and not clover. I was late in giving the command etc.

Two areas that I see we need to work on are contacts, and directional commands, especially in the tunnels. I also need to work on managing clovers energy. Most of the missed contacts were because clover was just so excited...and fast.