Tuesday, March 24, 2009

The Importance of a Healthy Breakfast

We ran Django, Tristan and Maebe in a CPE agility trial in Dexter over the past weekend, and had a great time. Django showed me that even though he is in Level 5 and only a handful of Q's away from earning his C-ATCH, he can still surprise me.

Django, for some strange reason, still needs one more leg in the Full House game. Full House is probably the easiest game CPE offers - basically you have about 30 seconds to run around and do as many obstacles for points as you can. Great for beginner dogs. For some reason though, the last several Full House runs we've entered, something completely random goes wrong. It is beginning to feel ridiculous that we can't get that last leg.

On Sunday, Full House started the day out and Django was the first dog on the line. We had a very fast, efficient course plotted out and it seemed like nothing could go wrong. Django took off great and was running fast. We rounded the last corner toward a set of weave poles, after which we just needed to do one tunnel and hit the table to Q. It was in the bag. Until Django's breakfast decided to make a reappearance at the third weave pole. Apparently the single bite of donut hole that I shared with him that morning did not sit well. Once it was urped up, he was happy and ready to go again, but, understandably, puking in the ring is grounds for an NQ.

Nevertheless, Django got a few steps closer to his title, and Tristan and Maebe tore up several of their courses, both getting multiple first places. On Saturday, Tristan had the fastest Colors run of the day, except he dropped the bar on the first jump so NQ'ed. Still, it never ceases to amaze me that this bionic dog can move around the agility course so quickly. After his knee surgeries, he slowed down in flyball quite a bit, but somehow they never hampered his agility performance. After two years of thinking he may never run again, it is always great to watch him out there.

We also learned that we got in to CPE Nationals in June, so are excitedly planning our road trip to Massachusetts with the two BCs. In the meantime, I am planning on going back and spending some time on basic flatwork with Django to get him reading my movement cues better. Got a lot of goals to work on in the next two months, so hopefully the spring weather continues to move our way.