We spent the weekend at the Morgan Hill USDAA trial. I have no video. I wish I did, because I would have seen some of the best runs that Banksy and I had thrown down together. Hopefully this is just the start of how all our runs will be in 2019.
They weren’t all this good, she had 2 bars in Steeplechase, with one of the fastest times in the show. And on the last day I made a few mistakes and twice used my fix and go option. But over the course of the weekend she had smoking fast wins in Grand Prix and Biathlon, and a selection of the titling classes. Banksy is winning with either the fastest or nearly fastest time of all the dogs at the trial.
She also had her first time faults ever! We had a showdown over laying on the table in standard, I just left it up to her and led out quite far across the ring. To her credit, she did lay down fast on the table, this isn’t a problem anymore. I’ve stopped boycotting standard and retrained her table, it works good now for the most part. But when I led out on one of the standard runs, she fell off because the new way she lays on the table is hanging off the side. I just kept leading out, she flopped herself back on but had to hovercraft for quite a while till she laid herself back down while I just stood there laughing. The judge was either laughing or wishing I would hurry up.
Some of the runs were the best team work we’ve ever had, it’s a feeling I don’t think I can explain, and I haven’t felt this before, except maybe with Otterpop when she used to read my mind on runs, Banksy though is reading my handling and I’m reading hers and it’s pretty amazing how I can set fast tight lines and keep her on them. She is my dream dog, I can’t believe I have a dog like Banksy.
Also she hit all her dog walks with PERFECT hits, two of them with hard exits, only one miss that was straight into a wall with a man sitting in a chair against it. One of my friend’s dogs got that one though, that was an impressive sight. We just did a fix and go and worked on other things.
This was the year Banksy and Gustavo almost died. This was the year that Otterpop lost her mind. This was the year where some things went down at work. This was the year that’s’ been a hard one. Except most of the bad turned out ok. We hope that our luck holds up this year, welcome in advance, 2019.