Saturday at Tryouts

I've been trying to write a re-cap of my WT tryouts experience all week, but it's just hasn't been happening. I know I have writers block when I procrastinate blog writing with actual WORK.

Each time I start writing I get so verbose and it becomes so boring to write that I think it must be boring to read. And also, I think it's because I'm still very much in shock and not quite sure that it's real. My goad has been to work towards a spot on the World Team for a long time now and I felt that I was in a pretty good position to be selected. We traveled to two ISC Qualifying events and won overall combined for both with all 1st places (although Daisy and Jester gave us a run for our money at the Portland one). We did very well at nationals running clean for all runs (except that little unimportant one called Finals) and winning 26" ISC combined on Friday.

I thought that if I could go to tryouts and run clean they would have to at least seriously consider us if not select us. So that was my goal. Just. Run. Clean.

I was so relieved when I saw the first course. It had challenges, but it wasn't nasty like some of the European courses are (the small and medium dogs weren't quite as lucky!) I though we did a great job on that course, but when we dropped the last bar I already failed at meeting my goal! And I knew for a fact that we wouldn't win a spot on the team, especially on Saturday. I could only be so disappointed though. I had so much fun running that course!

When I saw the 2nd course I was horrified! The opening wasn't pretty. I thought that maybe when I walked it things would look better, but no.... it was actually worse after walking it! That course was a bloodbath. It managed to take out EVERY SINGLE DOG who had run clean in the first round. All Rd 1 clean dogs minus Juice, but that goes without saying. So, since we managed to mangle our way through Rd 2 clean (luckily without me puking on course - which I really felt like doing), after two rounds Icon was sitting in 2nd place behind Juice. My bar down in Rd 1 was looking pretty good! But still at that point I knew there would be no spot for me on Saturday.

For Round 3 the course was once again a very fun, challenging course. There was a tunnel/dw discrimination that gave me a few flashbacks to AKC nationals finals but it wasn't a very hard discrimination so I tried not to think about it. I think out of all my runs, Rd3 was my favorite; we had a blast out there. I wasn't watching Marcus and Juice run after us, but when I heard a gasp I looked to see that they had dropped a bar, which is very unusual for Juice! I knew that we had won the round but didn't occur to me that we could have actually won the spot. We both had 5 faults but surely Juice's time over the 3 rounds was faster! But apparently Icon had a faster time in Rd1 and Rd3 while Juice beat us in Rd 2.

Ashely was watching the screen for combined scores and when he came over to tell me, I believe my exact words (said very loudly) were, "We're on the f*cking team???!?!?!". Probably not the most appropriate thing to say, but it just slipped out!

At tryouts last year I went out for dinner with people on Friday and Saturday after it was finished, but by Sunday Icon wasn't releasing from his start line or contacts on the first word, which is very typical of 'weird' behaviour I get from Tired Icon. This year I decided (for both AKC nationals and tryouts) to just focus on Icon and forget socializing. So we celebrated on Saturday night by going back to the hotel to sleep (even though Nancy K graciously invited us out to dinner!) Icon passed out right after he ate, but I was so excited I couldn't get to sleep until well after midnight.