A Secret Mission

Mid-Atlantic Agility Showcase

This weekend we were down in Fredericksburg, VA for the first ever mid-atlantic agility showcase. Cisco was only entered in 4 classes since he stresses so much over contacts. I had him entered in his favorite class Jumpers (which has no weave poles in USDAA — even better) and Snooker (which occasionally has a contact, but a lot of times we get lucky and doesn’t).

Friday, like most of the dogs, Cisco seemed a bit disconnected. His first course was Advanced Jumpers and he turned the wrong way and just wasn’t paying a lot of attention. He dropped a bar on a poorly timed rear cross. It just wasn’t a very good run.

His second run of the day was advanced snooker, which was outside on grass. I got to the walk-through late and had very little time for formulate a plan — I didn’t managed to get course maps for any starters or advanced courses any of the three days we were there. This snooker course not only had weave poles, but it had an a-frame too so I was a little worried about the closing sequence with him, but figured we’d see how far we got. We had a very nice opening sequence, but we started the closing by taking jump number 2 the wrong way in the closing. Apparently there was only one correct way to take that jump in the closing and since I was late for the walk-though and never got a course map, I didn’t know this little detail. whoops. Oh well, Cisco was very happy with himself after the run, so that was good to see.

The only class he was entered in on Saturday was advanced snooker, which was sometime in the afternoon. I again was late for the walk-through but managed to get myself and Cisco over there in time for his run. There were a bunch of conflicts, so even though we were supposed to be 6th dog in, it looked like we might end up being second. The gate steward had just informed us that we may need to be ready to go in next, when Cisco looked up at me and I saw blood on his neck. So nothing, like getting the poor guy all ready for his only agility run of the day and pulling him seconds from his run. I took him back to our crating area and upon further examination, it looks like he might have nicked part of the scab off on his chin coming out of his crate on the way to the ring. It wasn’t bleeding and he was fine. I felt kind of bad pulling him, but at the time, I had no idea what was wrong.

Sunday, Cisco again got to run jumpers in the afternoon. They were supposed to be holding the jumpers ring until the Triathlon got done running, but they only held it while the championship dogs were running and not the performance dogs. Someone came and found me and said they were calling for me. I had to run outside and get Cisco and bring him in. Poor guy didn’t get any kind of warm up before his run, but had a very good run. He was upbeat and excited and came in second place with a Q. It was a great way to end the weekend.