Road Trip

Sonic has now been on his first road trip for a competition following a weekend of agility at Geraldton. I feel like we had a successful weekend away but the success was definately not due to lots of qualifying cards coming our way... Sadly we managed not one single clear round thanks to a combination of bar knocking, missed weavers, see saw overzealousness and off courses.

Thankfully there were loads of positives after the weekend, not least that he travelled really well and coped without any problems in an unfamiliar environment, running over unfamiliar equipment and competing straight after spending about six hours in the car. The weavers were quite an issue and I think he only managed to do a whole set at the first attempt twice in eight events. Geraldton still have stick in the ground weavers that move around quite a lot after a couple of dogs have been through them and it is not uncommon for even the experienced masters dogs to have problems so I wasn't overly concerned. I have no doubt that those issues will resolve with time and experience.

A couple of the jumping courses were really tight with jumps all on top of each other. Keeping him close to me after he's taken an obstacle is one of the weaknesses I'm still trying to conquer so I wasn't in the least surprised when he swung away from my shoulder and took the off course jumps. We had a couple of lovely runs on an excellent agility and excellent jumping course but unfortunately bars came down. His contacts are still holding up extremely well in competitions and his dog walk is staying nice and fast which is great to see.

We have quite a few competitions coming up over May and June including our first ADAA weekend of competitions. So lots to practice and work towards. I still need to do a heap of work on the see saw but it will still be double box grid work first on the list to try and strengthen this peeling away from me problem. If we can't handle tight excellent courses then there will be no hope for us in masters!

So here are a selection of runs from the weekend.