The Dixon curse

My weekend sucked. I never seem to do well in Dixon.

The courses were awful. Unfair to large dogs and unsafe. On Saturday in JWW the weave entry was ridiculously close to the jump before, it was a 90 turn into a depressed entry. Only one dog Q'd in 24" and it was a s-l-o-w dog. Both my guys missed the entry. I guess I should have overhandled it (some might say handle it correctly), but I wanted to see if they'd get it, which they didn't. In Std, Polly Q'd and came 2nd, but he only got 13 points THIRTEEN for 2nd place! So he was 9 seconds under time. He is normally 15-18 seconds under time for std. The judge wheeled tight AND she had the weirdest table count. When Polly was on the table she kept stopping her count. Polly was down. I kept saying DOWN DOWN DOWN but he was as down as he could get! I almost just told her off right there, but she FINALLY said "go". It was really annoying. A lot of other people were complaining about her table count as well.

On Sunday it was really windy out and the courses were really nasty. Both dogs dropped the triple (2nd jump) in JWW. I'm not sure Icon actually hit the bar, a wind gust came up (it was very windy) and blew down about 3 or 4 bars at the same time the triple came down. I asked the judge to remove the call, but she said no. You gotta try, I guess... They rubber banded the jumps after Icon's run. And later I saw a dog drop a bar that was rubber banded (so it fell out of the cup, but not do the ground) and the judge didn't call it, but she RESET it. That kinda pissed me off.  Polly dropped the triple as well, but he really hit it. I'm not surprised because he was totally full of himself for that run and running extended. I had a hard time getting him to stay at the start line! He was raring to go, I think the wind had him feeling good. After the run about 5 people came up and told me how great he is. "He's as fast as a border collie!" Well, he's not but that's fun to hear ;) It made the NQ a bit less sad.

In Std there were really nasty approaches to tee teeter and dogwalk. I misjudged my distance crossing to the teeter for Apollo and he had a bad approach and came off the side and the judge called a flyoff. I don't think it WAS a flyoff because the teeter was on the ground and he was in the yellow before he came off, but he came off the side and she called it. The rest of the run was really nice though and he had really nice contacts so that was good, I guess.

I'm back in Dixon next weekend and my goal is to BREAK the curse! We'll see how that goes. I know one judge, Dan Selothfer, and like his courses so we should hopefully not have nasty, dangerous courses at least! Terry Culley is the other judge. I think I've heard the name, but I don't remember the judge.