Our first four day trial. I wouldn’t have attempted all four days except it was practically in our back yard.  First three days we had bad luck.  Lots of little things distracted him and it was a HUGE facility. 

Sunday, we started with Jumpers.  We had a beautiful run. Cooper was on fire and focused.  I had lots of distance work and was able to control him. That earned our third agility jumpers leg and TITLE.  Also took first place.  Our standard course was looking good till Cooper fell off dog walk.  He came to the top and completely fell off and landed on his side.  I ran back to him and fell to my knees.  My heart was in my throat and my world was crashing fast.  He just had the wind knocked out for a second.  It was horrible cause he feel completely on his side.  It sounded like the wind was being sucked out of the building by the crowd.  He got up and was a bit stunned and you could hear the crowd breathe again.  The judge allowed us to walk the dog walk again and finish course.  Cooper was back to his self and wanting to run 90mph, so  calmly let him run up the dog walk and a jump.  Told him good boy, and the crowd clapped for us.  I took him straight home and let him swim in the pond for 40minutes. 

 

     This was a big trial for us. Our first four day agility trial out of state.  We competed in Open Jumpers for the first time.  Cooper looked excellent. We had a two knocked bars when he got distracted mid-air by the border collies outside the ring.  The judge gave us lots of praise for our work and said he throughly enjoyed watching “big blue” fly in the ring. Told us to keep up the work because we’ll get it soon as he matures.  Standard course was next.  We fought through some distractions but we pulled it off.  It wasn’t absolutely pretty course, but we pulled it off.  Got our Novice Agility Title.  WOO  HOOOOO!  The rest of our weekend was training.  Our open jumpers courses were so close to getting it. A knocked bar was always stopping us.  The second jumpers judge didnt call  a knocked bar because he was enjoying watching Cooper jump.  It wasn’t till the gate steward pointed out a knocked jump.  We couldnt have accepted that leg knowing we didnt get it fairly.

 

 10th Show -AKC Rally – August 2009 Ruston, Louisiana