A Secret Mission

Crown Classic Agility Trial

I was a little worried about signing up Cisco for 4 days of agility since he seems to fade after a run or two sometimes. But since we were going all the way to Cleveland, I figured we better make the best of it and signed him up for everything. He had 3 runs on Thursday and Friday, and 2 runs on Saturday and Sunday.

Turns out he probably ended up having the best trial ever.

Day 1

Thursday we started the day bright and early with Open FAST. For some reason Cisco has really taking a liking to FAST — especially when we can avoid the weave poles and contacts. I planned out a fairly easy course with only a teeter as far as contacts and by-passing the weaves all together. My strategy with Cisco has always been not to try and get as many points as possible but to plan a path that has enough points to qualify and get in and out as fast as possible. It seems to work because he’s fast and motivated throughout the course. We ended up with the most points for the class and Q’d with a first place for his 2nd Open FAST leg.

We didn’t Q in either Std or JWW on Friday and we were stressing over the weave poles and quite pokey.

Day 2

Friday we again started with Open FAST and Cisco again Q’d with a 1st place completing his Open FAST (OF) title.

Our next course was Exc Std and again he was stressing big time. The weave poles were the third obstacle and he bailed on them about halfway through. Since I noticed he was stressed, we moved on and ran a fun course, we ended up skipping a few obstacles, but I wanted to make that run as fun as possible. This was so frustrating after what a great run we had had in Open FAST and how enthusiastic he was. I resigned myself that I needed to find a different strategy with him and maybe this meant not trialing him anymore. He loves classes, but does have a tendency to stress and become unmotivated at trials.

Our final class of the day ways JWW. And we managed to Q. We were very slow and pokey again and we only Q’d because AKC rounds down the time so our 40.39 was rounded down to 40 which was the SCT. So a Q, but no MACH points.

Day 3

I wasn’t sure how day 3 was going to go since we didn’t have the super fun FAST class first thing in the morning. Our first class was Standard and amazingly enough he qualified with a 3rd place! Our second AX leg!

This was followed a few hours later by a JWW run that was really quite decent, but we took the wrong end of the tunnel. No one saw anything that I might have done to push him into the wrong end, but he took it. Again our time was a couple of tenths of seconds over course time so if we would have gotten the right end of the tunnel, we could have Q’d.

Day 4

We were late and they were already running standard by the time we got to the trial Sunday morning. I walked and ran Riot’s course and then checked Cisco in and went and talked to people about how the course was running. I said I was going to run the course since I had paid for the run even through I wasn’t going to get a chance to walk it. Well somehow we ran it and ran it clean. Cisco almost took an off course jump after the teeter (I was told he actually touched it, but the judge didn’t call it), but I was able to call him off. We Q’d and got 1st place for this 3rd and final AX leg!

We also Q’d in JWW a few hours later. It took a lot of cheerleading on my part, but we made it through the course. I think that’s our 5th MXJ leg.

I’m thrilled we were able to finish his AX. This was something I was convinced wasn’t going to happen since we had been in Excellent Std since July 2008 and hadn’t Q’d once until New York last month. But he managed to Q in 3 of his last 6 runs to complete it!

I need to figure out what direction Cisco’s agility career is going to go. I know he does stress and am thinking about maybe only running him one class a day. Also, with the arthritis in his elbow, I need to consider moving him down to preferred classes. But being half way to his MXJ, I’m considering running him in just JWW for a few trials to see how it goes. I was really hoping we’d be able to finish he AX before moving him down and I’m so glad we made that goal.