Best Agility Day Ever!

Recently, we competed in Nashville for four days and the first day was one of my Best Agility Days Ever! First of all, Seven finally broke free from her four month long Double Q Curse and earned her 15th double qualifier (we need 20). On top of that, Riley earned her 22nd double qualifier!  I have never been able to double qualify both hounds in the same day so I was very excited about my first Double Double Q.

Here are those runs.  I have ordered a new video camera so I am  hoping my agility videos will be better going forward.  You can see that some of it is out of focus.  Here is Seven:

Here is Riley:

And then if that was not already good enough, I entered Maddie into the match that evening. A match is a chance to practice the obstacles in a trial setting. If you have an issue during the competition (weave pole problems or missed contacts, for example), it is an opportunity to purchase a short period of time to practice. It is also great for young dogs that have never trialed to get into the ring at one of their future trials.

Maddie, of course, is not old enough and has not had enough training to run an agility course, but I thought it was a nice opportunity to get her into the ring, jump a few jumps, and tug with me. Well, she was fantastic. We did some of our tight turn work over a couple of tiny jumps. Despite all the people and dogs that were ringside, I felt like I had her undivided attention. We attempted a tunnel at the far end of the ring that she refuses.  What I like about situation was that it was a moment of stress for Maddie.  You can see her bounce a little and get excited, but she stayed with me.  It was a perfect excuse to take off running (zoomies are often a sign of stress), but she did not. So I was very pleased that she was so attentive, tugged great, handled a stressful moment like a big girl, and had fun!

The next day fell flat.  Only one clean run out of four. BUT THEN another Double Double Q on Day 3! My goal is always for each Master level dog to Double Q once at each trial, but for them to each to accomplish it twice had me feeling really spoiled.  Here is Seven:

And Riley:

And then on the last day, we pulled off another clean run out of four.  No complaints though.  Day 1 and Day 3 way over shadowed the lows of Day 2 and Day 4.