Seven's Invitational

I finally got my photos from the AKC Agility Invitational in mid December.

At the event, my big concern with Seven was her left wrist.  As you know, it periodically becomes painful for a few minutes when she does tight left turns and torques the joint.  It was happening about once every two weeks or so, but suddenly two weeks before the event it would happen everyday.

I stopped training Seven the week prior and galloped her in straight lines using my bike, jogged her, and worked her on the balance discs and peanut.  We avoided anything with tight turns.

I just wanted to get Seven through this one event and then start on a plan for her wrist.  We made it.  Seven never came up lame at the trial.  All in all, Seven did fine.  We certainly were not running our best and she was wild at times.

The one thing that irritated me... and I know this is stupid, but in Ring 1, they announce a bio for each dog as they are running the course.  The 24" dogs only get to use Ring 1 one time so the girls' bios were only read once.  However, during Seven's run they did a totally random announcement and skipped over her bio completely.  Many of the bios are boring and simple tout all of the dog's titles, but a few would have interesting stories about how they beat a health problem or that the dog was a rescue.  I thought Seven's bio was interesting being that she is an ex-racer and has a movie coming out in April.  I put how many races she had run and how many of those she had won and then a few details about the movie.  And it never got read.  No big deal... but it still irritated me.

This is Round 1.  Seven's best and only qualifying run.  She placed 11th out of 114 dogs.

This is Round 2.  This Jumper course had a really tough opening.  It was herky jerky and no way for us to do it smoothly.  You will see me just jumping in front of her to force front crosses.  We get through the tough stuff and she shoots off over an extra jump at 15 seconds.  Then she turns the wrong way before the weaves and spins (at least it was a spin to the right on her good wrist).  She was just all over the place.

Here is Round 3. It got messy at the weave poles.  First she blew by the weave poles and then had another off course which put me out of place.

Hopefully we will have another shot at it next year.  We also have the AKC Agility Nationals coming up in March.  Hopefully we will have more practice before that event and do better.

Of course, something had to get shredded.