Feed Polly: USDAA Bay Team Regionals

What a weekend! Firstly I have to say I love my RV. I can't believe I ever lived without it. It's so nice to have a place to go to and relax at a trial. Although, come to think of it, I never did that. But it's nice to have the OPTION to go there and relax. What's even nicer is to not have to worry about getting up and driving first thing in the morning on a trial day. I can wake up and leisurely get ready for the trial (and somehow I still manage to run late!). But it's definitely more relaxing. RV, I love you!

Overall the trial was very good to us, although I choked on the big kahuna, GP Round 2. It was an easy course that we could have aced. I'm not sure we could have beaten Rob and Cap for the win (although it's possible...) but we definitely could have run that one clean. But NOOOOOoooOOOoo. I had to go and not support a tunnel entrance enough so Icon didn't take it. Before I knew it, he flew over a jump for an E. Doh! Maybe we are destined to start in the quarter finals this year at nationals. We do have one more chance this weekend in Texas, though. Other than that one boo-boo, Icon was awesome (ok, Icon was awesome all weekend, the boo-boo was mine). We qualified in everything else, with our only mistakes being a missed weave entry in SC rd 1 (but luckily we still made it to rd 2!), and a dropped bar in Snooker, which cost us 6 points and probably 1st place, but we still q'd. It wasn't a pretty run at all and I'm sure I caused him to drop the bar. We also had a bit of a weave issue in the opening of gamblers on sunday, but we did get the gamble for a q. I think I need to practice weave entries more. The problem is that his issues arise when he's approaching them full speed and it's not easy to get that in my back yard.

Icon had many brilliant moments on the weekend. On Saturday we won Team Jumpers, Standard and Gamblers and came 2nd in Team Snooker by one point. Pretty freaking awesome to do so well at a regional with 48 dogs in our jump height! Our other notables were an apparently spectacular Jumpers run on Monday where I had people approaching me all day saying how amazing the run was. It was very very embarrassing to say the least, but nice to hear :) And to wrap up the weekend Icon won 26" Steeplechase! That was a nice feeling after totally screwing up his GP Rd 2 run.

Apollo was such a good boy all weekend. He didn't have a voucher for GP Rd 2 so we had to get there the hard way, and he did it in style, but the judge called his up contact on the dogwalk so he got there with 5 faults. What a stupid rule. His approach was totally safe for it, but just because he naturally strided over the contact he gets called. That's ok this year, but next year they are not allowing faults in GP so that would have been considered a non-qualifying run (btw, Icon also got called on his up contact, and thereby lost his 2nd place in GP Rd 1. Apollo clearly missed it, but I think Icon's was a bad call - boo!). In his Std run on Sunday, Apollo fell off the dogwalk :( While massaging him later I noticed that he had a scrape on his arm from it. Poor guy. He didn't run as well the rest of the weekend, although he did run clean (according to me) in GP Rd 2 (the judge though his missed his dogwalk up contact) and got a bye into the semi's at nationals (Yay Polly!!) and came 2nd in PSJ Rd 2 (and won $48!!) He definitely wasn't moving with his Polly Pep after the dogwalk fall, though :(

Foster also had a fun weekend with a bunch of dock diving! A friend took him on Saturday because I was too busy with the trial, he didn't get to do any on Sunday, which was my fault because I had him up at the agility site instead of down by the RV where Chia could grab him and take him in the pool. But on Monday he got to go back again and he was doing some great jumps for a 75lb dog! He made 15 feet! I'm thinking about entering him in another competition because I think he could do well :) Due to the trial, I didn't let Icon do any dock diving until end of the day Sunday and end of the day Monday, but he loves it so much. He also had some really nice jumps going over 16 feet. He has great speed on the dock and if he would get a bit more height he could be a contender! But it's not something I'm going to train for ;)

So I had such a great time at the Bay Team regional. On Saturday night we had an ADCH bbq for Debbie and Shadow, where we had WAY too much food (but it was yummy) and it was freeing cold. On Sunday I had fun hanging out with Debbie and bbqing even MORE way too much food white it was still freezing out. This was the first time we both had our RVs at a show and it was fun!

Ok, here are some videos from the weekend:

Icon Team Standard