TLC weekend and Halloween

Happy Halloween!  Here's a pic of Marc’s son’s costume – pretty scary!

We get to stay with friends when we go to West Palm Beach - they live on 6 fenced acres of paradise with a pool - my dogs are in heaven there especially little Bosco!

In spite of the crappy weather, we had fun at the 3-day USDAA trial this past weekend in West Palm – lots of bad stuff but lots of good things too!!!  Fun but VERY challenging courses...if I remember correctly, there was a TOTAL of only THREE qualifying Grand Prix runs - total!

We drove down on Thursday morning and went to Gayle York’s so she could show me how to teach Triumph a 4-on the teeter – all that diving for the ground that he has been doing just cannot be good on his body, his wrists, shoulders, and on my mind!!!  It was time well spent and in one lesson and one practice session, he got it AND he gave me three 4-on teeters this weekend – I was thrilled and absolutely amazed.  Either he is just brilliant and/or realized very quickly it was much more comfortable for him to NOT dive for the ground. 

While we only came away with another Steeplechase Q and a master pairs Q, I was very happy with bits and pieces of most of his runs – especially happy with his teeter performances, dog walks and aframes and his jumping – his startline, however, is our next battle. 

On Friday we had standard, Grand Prix and Snooker.  He pushed his startline right off the bat but I let it go as I really wanted to see what his teeter would be like – he did not dive but after one lesson, I didn’t expect it to be perfect.  However, allowing him to get away with not staying at the start line in that first run set the precedent for the next two classes and the rest of that run, was a total trainwreck!

Grand Prix would have been a fun course to run but he decided to release himself and went without me and ran past the second jump.  I asked him for a sit, he sat, and then as soon as I moved he took off so we left the ring.  I hate that.  Then we had snooker and I needed a long lead out for my course and again, we had to leave the ring…I REALLY hate that.

For the rest of the weekend, I decided to leave him in a down and he was actually pretty good – well sort of.

Recap of the three days:

Master gamble 3^rd place, master pairs Q and 2^nd place, Steeplechase Q and 1^st place, Steeplechase round final 3^rd place ($12.48), master standard 1^st place and master jumpers 1^st place

A highlight to my weekend was having the judge pull me aside to tell me she thought my dog was fabulous…I’ve always thought that but to hear that from other people is really nice and to have a judge go out of their way to tell an exhibitor that, is really, really nice.  However, the biggest highlight for me was that by Sunday morning, Burn was not limping at all – yeah J

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Here is his master standard run from Saturday – although he took an off course after the dog walk, I was pleased overall with his start, his jumping, his teeter, dog walk, aframe and even the table and with his sit at the end of the run - yes, he used to jump on me and bite me!  I gotta give him credit, he sure gives 100% effort and really does try to please me. 

He thinks he's fabulous too!

oh yeah, and just for some entertainment value, here's my ONE point snooker run...I hate that too...BUT he did give me a decent lead out, and had this been a year ago, he would have launched himself from about 20 feet away from that jump, so while he did "measure" his take off, he did NOT take off way early so I was pretty happy with that...