Aloha Hawaii

Rumor and I were lucky enough to be 1 of 5 dogs invited to introduce DockDogs to Hawaii with 2 National events just outside of Honolulu.  They were very long weekends, but we had a blast!  The people we met there were great and I hope they have success with their new club... Aloha DockDogs.  In between events we had 4 days off so Rumor got to do plenty of playing on beaches, hiking and enjoying all of the scenery.

Rumor had trouble the 1st weekend in Hawaii because we haven't ever competed at night under lights before and it didn't occur to me, but he wasn't able to see his toy in the water, since I do place and send with him.  The glare from the lights made it quite difficult.  We didn't start off strong, but we ended the 2nd weekend really well.  I found toys that Rumor could see under the glare of the lights at night and it made a huge difference.  I was so excited when Rumor finished his Super Elite title since he's the 1st Border Collie to ever earn this National title!  In addition to that, he was consistently jumping over 25', which just blew me away.  He even set a new personal best of 26'... which, I believe, is the farthest jump in DockDogs for any Border Collie as well -- he just keeps getting better and better!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1egw1D350E

Rumor AXJ!

Woohoo!  Rumor finally finished his AXJ after struggling with JWW for a while.  He had some nice Standard runs too... I feel those QQs getting within reach  :-)

More Agility :-)

It finally feels like Rumor and I are running as a team again.  I have to admit, it was nice being indoors, on turf this weekend... definitely helped both of us out.

We are still chasing our last ExA JWW Q... but had 2 gorgeous runs this weekend with just 1 error each.  We did get another World Team Tryouts score in standard, so I was happy with that.  Eventhough we had 3 nq runs, I was still thrilled with how he was running... definitely improving all the time still!

Back to some AKC Agility... 1st WT Score!

We went to an AKC Agility trial at a fantastic, new facility in Barrington, IL.  I loved it and hope that there are many more events at this location in the future. 

Rumor and I are still trying to get our last ExA JWW score to finish our AXJ title... we had a fantastic run on Saturday, but I screwed the poor boy up going into the weaves.  Oh well, it will come soon enough.

Rumor *did* have a gorgeous Std run on Sunday and it is, officially, our 1st score to qualify for World Team Tryouts.  I'm going to see if we can qualify for Tryouts in May 2011.  He had a nice Std run at 26" and ran 4.99 yps, so I was happy with that.

I'm definitely looking forward to another weekend of agility next weekend... trying to fit in as many trials as we can before heading to Hawaii!