Yesterday we had our first trial of the season, just taking the dogs out to knock the rust off before Louisville in two weeks.
Georgie went first and oh boy. Not surprisingly, my mom hasn't done hardly any work with her, so she is basically exactly the same dog as when we stopped in November. Poor impulse control, she still doesn't understand contacts, and her weaves are questionable. Her standard run was pretty bad. Jumpers was better, she even saved my ass when I didn't get a cross in like I was hoping and I instead made a desperate push to a jump that was kind of hidden behind a pole - she totally read the push, saw the jump, and took it. She would have had a Q except she stopped halfway through the weave poles to go sniff at the wall (??? REALLY???) I don't even know what to do with her because she's not my dog so I can't just take her away and train her, and even when I make up a plan and tell my mom "work on THIS and do THIS on THIS day" she just doesn't do it. It's a shame, she's a great dog but if nobody puts time into her, she won't develop like I know she can. We'll just have to see... it's not Georgie's fault.
Payton. Payton Payton Payton. I don't remember if he got his a-frame contact or not because I am trying this new thing called "trust your dog." The dog has been trained, he knows what to do, so I am going to trust him to do what he was been trained to do. I do know he got his dog walk contact even though I was high-tailing it at top speed away from him, so that's a big deal. He missed his weave entrance the first time, got in the second and then popped at the end, got it the third time. He also got several refusals because his commitment has suffered through the off-season. I really need to work more on sending him to a variety of obstacles, because he kept second-guessing me and coming off obstacles instead of taking them. But that's not all bad, because it means he's paying more attention to me and trying to do what I want rather than just playing Paytongility without concern for what I really want him to do.
His jumpers run was looooovely, weaves first time, beautiful, fast, it was a great run. He did drop two bars but I think he was struggling a bit with the flooring, or potentially he is sore (he also didn't want to jump up into his crate stacked on top of Georgie's, and he didn't want to jump into his crate in the car when we left either.) If not for dropped bars we would have a second OAJ leg.
Cautiously optimistic, it felt really good. We also got some nice all-out fast as hell running at the end of the JWW course which I always love and so does he, so that put the cherry on top. Better commitment in JWW too. My friend did tell me he thinks this will be the year Payton starts to settle in so I'm hoping it's true, hoping we are going to really start to gel as a team and we'll finally get somewhere together.
We didn't stay for the second day because of the snow storm coming, a whole bunch of people were leaving and not going to come back, they were discussing canceling the trial, and one person said if the snow is bad enough they close roads and then people can't get out of the town, so I just checked out of my hotel early and came home yesterday. I regret it a bit because Georgie at least could really use the ring time, but the roads in both states are apparently horrible and I am super sick now so it was probably the right call. Whomp.