Agility Update

We just got in from our club's CPE trial, and Tess and Jazz had what our friend Ron likes to call a "polyester weekend."

Tess qualified and placed in 9 of her 10 runs! She missed a perfect weekend by one second, which happened when she had to stop to sneeze just before the weaves in the last class of the trial. Arrrgh!! We're thrilled with her performance, though, since her nine qualifying runs were in either Level 5 or the Championship level, which are the highest levels of competition in CPE. Tess also Q'd in 7 of 8 runs in CPE agility two weeks ago, and had a double Q and two Standard Qs in AKC agility last weekend.

Little sister Jazz is starting to get the hang of this agility stuff. After a rather dismal 1 for 8 performance at CPE two weeks ago, she got a Novice Standard Q in AKC last weekend and qualified in 8 out of 10 runs this weekend!! Jazz is really starting to settle in and get comfortable with agility and had a really fun weekend. She is becoming less and less tentative and really showing what she can do. She had a rather tough transition from running with me to running with Jim (as evidenced by that 1 for 8 weekend where she spent most of her time in the ring looking for me), but they really pulled together this weekend and made a great team. I've decided to leave the agility stuff to Jim, while I concentrate on Rally, Obedience, and Jazz's Road Trial training. With me now taking riding lessons and doing the endurance work with Jazz, along with our Rally and Obedience classes, it really left very little time for me to work on agility training, not to mention my full-time court reporting business. I really think that Jazz will benefit in agility from having a confident handler like Jim, and I'd prefer to concentrate on Rally and Obedience, along with our Road Trial work.

So, that's our agility update. We have another busy weekend next weekend, and then things will settle down until late July. It's been a lot of fun spending the past few weekends with our agility friends, but not much gets done at home while we're playing...and the work weeks come around again way too quickly!!