Ups and downs and queuing in agility

Last Saturday began the week-long agility event called Supadogs. I was pretty down on Saturday after a fight with jet-lagged hubby on Friday and then a 5 minute walk back and forth to the day parking at the show on Saturday. I was just about ready to pack it up and go home! Added to the stress I had offered to help and ended up as a "caller" for a ring. Remind me never to do that job again! I think every person running in agility should have to work at every job at least once. Then they can understand WHY things are done as they are.

At a show like Supadogs with such distances from parking and camping to the rings it is really hard to tell someone they cannot queue. But when the queue is 12-25 dogs long is it right to let people queue up when they are not really due to run? What does that mean then for the people who are scheduled to run, show up at the correct time and then still have to wait 30 minutes standing in line? It was such a tough call as I really sympathized with the people who had just walked miles only to find out that it was not their running orders yet. I felt like a mean person! Should I have just let anyone run in any order?

The excuses I got for running out of order were funny at times. Almost all centered around the fact that they did not want to walk back to their car or camping. While I fully understood their dilemma; did they not realize that everyone had this problem? As usual I got one or two really grumpy and down right rude people. I was proud of myself though and just ignored them and didn't stoop to their low level. For the most part people, after their initial begging, were understanding.

Anyway no more calling for me! I will stick to judging, scribing, pads or poles! :-)

So obviously we had no luck at the first day of Supadogs in our own runs. Some close calls with Hex who was an absolute star but we just had some minor errors. Zen was the worst I have even seen her and I had to carry her out of the ring at one point! I have never ever had to do that with Zen before and hope to never have to do that again. She usually tries so hard for me and I do not know what went wrong that day.

BUT there was some really positive great news from the first day at Supadogs! Two of Zen's brothers had some fabulous runs and results:

• Bailey (Obay Truly Daniel's Dream) run and trained by 9 year old Daniel had his first ever 1st place!! Since Saturday he has put in quite a few clear rounds during supadogs week and has had even more placements not only in his junior classes but also in regular classes competing against the adults! This is really a special achievement as his mom, Linda, runs and organizes the Supadogs show. At such a huge event Linda is busy 24/7 and how wonderful for her to be able to award her own son a First prize! She was starting to choke up when reading out his results and I, of course, started crying also! Daniel and Bailey have such a special relationship. I have been promised photos and also have a video from later on in the week.

• Lucky (OBay Truly Lucky) started later in agility as he was focusing mainly on obedience. Recently he has started to be trained in agility by a young handler named Catherine. They have only been working together for around 2 months. Catherine is running Lucky this week at Supadogs and on the first day he won his jumping class! Lucky is a powerful dog and when he gets it right he will do fabulous and Catherine is just the right handler for him. He has had another clear (2nd place) and few near misses during the rest of the week but is getting great experience and now Catherine knows what he needs to work on.

So I was grateful to Lucky and Bailey (and Catherine and Daniel) for improving my outlook on Saturday! Sunday and the rest of the week at Supadogs turned out to be much much better! More news to come.....