We left on Wednesday, November 11th flying to Phoenix with a layover in Dallas/Ft Worth. Harley did very well in the airport and on the plane, although the Charlotte ticket counter gave us a little trouble. After picking up our rental car and getting to the hotel, it was already 12:30 AM (2:30 ET) and we had to be at the trial site at 7:00!
Thursday's itinerary included our Performance National Standard agility run and dock diving. Cynosport certainly tests your handling and course memorization as everyone walks in the morning, but you and your dog might not run it until hours later. Luckily for James, our scheduled run time was only about 1.5 hours after the walk-through.
The course was tough, and as such, I decided to be cautious and conservative in my plan. When we ran, I found myself VERY nervous, and it showed. Harley was a good sport and kept with me, but dropped the second to last jump bar, which I can only blame myself for since I didn't put her in a good position. I tried doing a rear-cross after the weaves (18) but realized Harley didn't have enough momentum yet, and my rear made her jump early. She landed on the bar (19). As always, I congratulated Harley at the finish for a great run. The dropped bar had put us just short of advancing to the Semifinals.
The Splash Dogs Dock Diving competition started shortly after our agility run. We did 3 'waves' during the course of the day, and each wave includes 2 jumps, the higher of which determines your score. We posted consistent jumps around the 18 and 19 foot marks, with our longest jump being 20 feet 6 inches.
Friday was Kristen's turn on the Performance Speed Jumping Semifinals course. Unlike the previous day, our run was not as close to the walk-through. Kristen walked the course around 8:00am, and her run was not scheduled until 2:20pm! Despite the long wait, Kristen kept the course fresh in her mind by watching other competitors' runs throughout the day. Harley did very well again, but missed her weave poll entry. She didn't get any faults for it, but the time taken to reset her back in the weaves put us outside of the top dogs. Only the top eight dogs in each height class advanced, and the slowest time of the eight in our height was 25 seconds!
We had 3 more waves of Dock Diving on Friday, and each jump was around the 17 to 19 foot mark. Harley made an impression on the announcer, who frequently remarked on her good form and how beautiful she was.
Saturday was a down day. We did one dock diving wave in the morning and then decided to drive out to the Grand Canyon as neither of us had ever been. The drive from Scottsdale was about 3.5 hours though the desert and mountains near Flagstaff. To our surprise, we drove through a snow flurry! It had been in the 70's in Scottsdale, and we were a bit unprepared for how cold it would be at the Grand Canyon. Despite the cold temperatures, the views were breathtaking. Our only regrets were not having more time to wander (we got there an hour before sunset) and not bringing warmer clothes!
Sunday went very quickly. James ran the European Jumpers course. Harley didn't do very well as she was very distracted during the run. I can't blame her - it had been a long week and she was doing much more than she would do at a normal trial.
We did qualify for the Dock Diving finals on Sunday, but unfortunately we couldn't compete since we had to catch our flight home.
After our run, we packed up everything and headed to the airport. After 2 long flights, we picked up our puppy, Mo, from my parents' house. We finally made it home at 12:30am, just in time to go to sleep and go to work the next morning!
Even though we didn't advance past the first rounds, we throughly enjoyed ourselves. USDAA knows how to put on a great trial and treat the competitors right! We hope to qualify again this coming year, especially since it was announced that the Cynosport Games would be heading east to either Philadelphia or somewhere in Kentucky.
Our next trial is in December, wish us luck!
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