The Agility Gods were looking down on us...

Yes, the agility gods were looking down on us at the trial this past weekend. Last night I reviewed the video of clover's qualifying run in the regular class and it was obvious that she missed the down contact on the A frame by almost a foot and the judge didn't catch it. ...hey, I am not complaining, it just verifies that we definitely need to work on contacts.

Last night was a nice change in routine. I was scheduled to have novice agility class, but since Michele was still sick we reviewed videos instead. Clover still needed exercise so rented the ring for an hour. Guess what we worked on... you got it, contacts and contacts. I think the food as a reward on for contacts is working well. The ring was set up yet from the course of the week we ran on Wednesday, so I tried running the elite course instead of the novice. Clover did very well, even with the 12 weave poles.

I ran clover hard last night and gave her a lot of exercise, since I had the entire ring to my self. I'm even a little tired my self. In fact a couple of weeks ago I joined a health club because I realized how tired I was after running clover in agility for an hour. I need to get into shape. I will definitely argue with those who do not call this a sport.

That fact was clear to me last night when we were watching videos. You sure don't see any fat people running these dogs, especially at the international level. The way the evening ran--- Michele gave us a map of the FCI World Championship in Italy 2004, Jumping Medium Individual class, and we put two paths down, the one the dog would take and the one the handler would take. We included all crosses, turns etc. We also looked at the Large Individual class These are tough courses! We then watched the video on the varying ways the pros did it. It was an excellent class and very educational. All I can say is WOW! Here are some videos and course maps from the competition.

I sure noticed the high number of Belgians, (Tervs, Malinois, and Groenendael) that were competing. A couple of them reminded me a lot of Clover. I guess they are much more popular overseas.

Until next time...