Squid did her first trial of 2012, and her first since September, yesterday. It was a long day in a cold riding facility, and a long drive, but it was worth it. I realize that I have a lot to work on, her performance is far from how it is at home where she doesn’t get aroused by other dogs running agility. Last season, I felt that all the training i put in made a big difference and that it got better, but we’re back where we started at the beginning of this season. She’s acting like a different dog and the biggest thing is that she is ignoring decel and looking for tunnels and weave entries. It’s really boring training, but I realize it has to be done. I want to trial with the dog I have in training. Crazy Squid still managed to win both her runs and is now qualified for class 3 in jumpers. Exciting!

This week has been packed with dog training. I counted 31 hours in indoor training arenas in four days! We’ve done obedience, agility and herding. Yesterday was finally the day of Squids second agility trial. We entered one trial in December, where we weren’t prepared enough for performing in that environment. Squid gets very excited around other dogs doing agility and I wasn’t really prepared for it (especially not with a sore foot that made me limp around the course). Since then, I have taken every chance to train with others, letting her go crazy and then work on start line behavior, contacts, weaves and handling. All the hard work has really payed off. Squid was completely quiet before her runs (I managed her very carefully), didn’t move a foot on her start lines and ran clean and fast. She came second in the standard run and won jumpers. We’re now one third on the way too the next class. Here is a video of our runs:

We’ve started the new year with four days of trialing. Both our cars have broken down, so it has been a project to get to and from the trials. I’m very thankful for my friends that help me out. On Monday and Tuesday, we went to Kista, outside of Stockholm for one standard run and three jumper runs. The carpet was very slippery, and Shejpa did not like running on it. She was clean in all four runs, but not at all fast. We came 3rd in standard, but did’nt get any good placements in jumpers. On Saturday and Sunday, we went to Gothenburg to run four classes. My parents live there, so having to take the train there was weighed out by all the great food and all the help I got. The carpet in Gothenburg was much nicer, Shejpa did only slip once, after the first jump in the first class, wich caused her to drop the next bar. She was much faster and seemed to enjoy herself more.

We got eliminated due to going off course in three of the runs. Two of them were my handling errors, one was her ignoring my threadle arm and going into the wrong end of the tunnel (that’s a first), I need to reward more first arm changes in training. In our fourth run, we got a refusal at the weaves. The weaves are still our biggest challenge and I can’t wait for spring to come so that we can do more training. We’re not entered in any trials for a couple of months now, so Shejpa will get some rest and we’ll work on details for a while. There are a lot of things that we need to improve

The next few days will be spent obedience training with our favourite instructor, Maria Hagström. I haven’t had much time to train Squid since we worked with her before christmas, but I’m hoping that the little training we’ve done has taken us a bit further. Thomas and Pogue are preparing for class II and Squid and I are preparing for class I. I’m also very motivated to work on agility with Squid. I’m really looking forward to spring!

Here’s a video from yesterday:

We’re finally connected to the world via broadband! I’m celebrating by posting two videos from the trial last weekend. First video is of the run where Shejpa came second. Second video is of Fonzies debut run in standard (one bar down).

This weekend was Shejpa’s debut in class II at a trial a couple of hours drive north at a very nice indoors arena where they could fit two rings. First class on Saturday was standard and we were unfortunaltly eliminated because Shejpa missed a pole in the weaves, and I wasn’t sure about it. My goal for the run was to get a good seesaw and she did it well. Next class was jumpers and we had a clean run, with a few turns that were not very good. She won the class and got her first jumpers leg in class II. Last class was an open jumpers class, where we got to compete against dogs from class III and the world team. Shejpa did really well and the handling felt great, I think we won a lot on good rear crosses. I crossed behind her at the last tunnel and she came out the wrong way and we lost a second or two there. I thought we were out of the top 3, but we actually won by 1,5 seconds! Open classes are unofficial, but this was the win that has made me happiest so far.

Sunday started with standard again and Shejpa and I had a clean run and got our first leg in A2. She had a great run, but I had to wait for 8 seconds on the seesaw before she nose touched. She has a hard time nose touching if she’s not coming with speed onto the seesaw and therefore doesn’t land in 2o2o when the seesaw hits the ground. Despite those 8 seconds, we took second place, only 2 seconds after the winner. Last run for the weekend was jumpers and this was a course that I really liked. Unfortunatly, Shejpa came out of the first tunnel when I just turned and ran instead of crossing behind her. Need to work on staying in tunnels even if I do weird things. She also dropped a bar after the weavepoles. Even though I had to put her back in the tunnel, she was the faster than all other small and medium dogs.

Two wins and two legs are great, but what makes me most happy is that Shejpa is such a wondeful dog to have at a trial. She is so relaxed and sleeps as long as nothing happens. She is as fresh at 7 pm as she is in the morning, since she only gears up when she is running. She is walking nicely around, wagging her tail at everybody. I can see that she has started to really like agility, because she would get excited when we were getting ready to go into the ring. Not about the chicken necks, but excited about running agility, wich is a big thing for Shejpa! She even started tugging on her leash before the last run. I never thought that day would come

I didn’t get all runs on video. The worst one (elimination) and the best one (win in open jumpers) are not in here: