ASCA agility + obedience trial in Columbia, MO

The weekend was not of to a good start. Freezing-ass-cold, expensive-rip-off-motel and my bitch-in-the-house attitude is never a good setup... At least the agility trial was held in a relatively warm indoor arena that held the agility, obedience and conformation shows. We had entered in two obedience trials on Saturday + 5 agility runs and just 5 agility runs Sunday. So quite a busy weekend!

The first obedience run was first, and can't say I trained at all. Lucky we did the same thing in 2009 so I knew the rules pretty well.. Dracu barked a few times so that lowered our score, but still we got a 187, 1 leg and 1st place. The second run was around midday and the individual parts went real well, but just before we went into the ring for the sits and stays, Dracu got her paw caught in a folding chair and screamed bloody murder. I yanked it out and there was no visible damage so we went into the ring to do the long sits and downs. Poor Dracu started licking her paw in the sit and laid down to get a better angle! So there went the CD title... No Q for us :( In ASCA you can fart around and do a really bod job (believe me, I saw some runs you won't believe) but as long as the dogs gets some points it will probably Q. We do everything else perfect and have one 0 score and that's it. Pretty harsh if you ask me...

Agility was also pretty crappy. The surface was a rug and Dracu was clearly uncomfortable on it. We knocked so many bars down that steam was coming out of my ears! Some bars were because I was handling her (but still she should not have knocked them down!) but some were just random. It's these low jumps, Dracu is not really trying to go over clean as with higher bars. The only Q's we got were two from Open Gambler, and so we got our GS-O title. We did Elite Jumpers and Elite Regular and the only faults were bars, no missed contacts, no off-courses.

So all in all, not a good weekend. I was real pissed off and poor Dracu was getting the short end because there was nobody else to be angry at :( I felt much better when we loaded the car up and drove out of Columbia, MO. Definitely not my kinda town!