Agility Dog Champion Dasher!!
This weekend the boys and I headed off to Swedesboro, NJ for the Paws In Motion trial. The weather forecast was outstanding, both Saturday and Sunday in the 70’s and sunny. Doesn’t get much better than that!! Saturday was a full day of titling classes and Steeplechase and Sunday had all titling classes and the Grand Prix.
Zorro was feeling a bit stressed all weekend, he decided earlier in the week that the dogwalk was far too scary to do, and he refused the dogwalk in the first class of the day, Adv. Std. The next class was Starters Gamblers and Zorro was sniffing and not working so no Q for us there. I decided to scratch him from most of his other classes until he feels more comfortable. On Sunday I did run him in Starters Gamblers where he did get a 1st and Q and his Agility Dog title!! I decided I would move Zorro down to Performance where he would only have to jump 12″ and he should be more comfortable.
Zip and Dasher had an amazing weekend, Zip Q’d in 7 out of 8 classes!! WoHoo!! He earned 2 Super Q’s in Snooker and also won Steeplechase. He was such a superstar!! All of Q’s resulted in 1st or 2nd places. We were really working as a team all weekend, it felt great!! The last class of the day on Sunday was Jumpers and I decided to scratch Zip from Jumpers because he had done so much running all weekend I thought he needed a break. Dasher came into the weekend needing one Standard Q to complete his Agility Dog Championship. He started the weekend great, earning a Jumpers and Gamblers Q at the beginning of the day. Our next class was Standard. As luck would have it the first obstacle in the course was the chute. This is great news for us since Dasher is notorious for dropping the first bar on course. As we stepped up to the line I reminded myself that this was just like any other run and remembered the feeling of running the dogs at home. Dasher had a beautiful run, smooth and effortless for him. There were some tricky spots but he handled them like a pro. After Dasher sailed over the last rail and was clean all my friends on the sidelines went wild!! It was such a great feeling!! I was so proud of Dasher!! It has been a long road with us, many obstacles to overcome, so this milestone was a sweet one. Dasher is officially an Agility Dog Champion!! The rest of the weekend was a blur. Dasher unfortunately did not get his last needed Grand Prix Q, we had one rail down, but he did get another Gamblers Q on Sunday.
The last class of the day on Sunday was Jumpers and Jeannette was feeling a bit burnt out after all her runs all weekend so she offered to let me run her Border Collies, Rumble and Eve. Of course I jumped at the chance since running Jeannette’s dogs is always so much fun. Both Eve and Rumble ran great. My timing was slightly off as the Border Collies cover the ground a bit faster than my guys, but we managed to Q in both runs. We left Dreampark at 7:30 p.m. a very long day, but well worth it. I could not have been prouder of all the dogs!!