Agility at Elma & Ridgefield

At the Portland Agility Club Trials held at Ridgefield, Tessa finished her Open Standard title and moved up into Excellent where she had some great runs. No Qs yet but boy did she show she was ready for that class. Carol ran her January 3 & 4 in Open FAST for the first time and she earned her first two legs! Carol overheard the judge on Saturday as Tessa exploded through the weaves. A single exclaimation of "DAMN!" Afterwards the judge came up to me and commented on the fabulous weaves.

Lark put in some great runs and the last two weekends of trials and Carol reports: "it felt like we actually clicked. She missed a double Q two days by knocking a bar but the other days we did double Q. Just to give you an idea of the competition here, one day Lark was 17 seconds under standard course time (on a standard course) and that wasn't even good enough for a placement. We have some really fast dogs out here!"

With Lark's double Q she now has 14 total and over 700 points!!!! Go Pacific Northwest Briards!!!

Carol ran Tessa in Open JWW and her first time in Exc Standard the last weekend in December at Elma. A friend filmed the runs and posted them to youtube (see links below). This was their first day out after being snow bound in their house for 10 days. Carol said she had one crazy Briard at that trial!

The JWW run had Tessa heading for an off course with a bar down but other than that she was pretty good. It looks like Carol quit the run at the end but actually Tessa cleared the last jump then Carol slowed and Tessa just shot over an extra jump. Watch the run http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfxnu0OovhA

In the standard run Carol said "I was an idiot at the weave entry and didn't remember she is really a green dog. She then proceeded to have two bars down on the rest of the course. It is a bit like driving a Ferrari in that she responds so quickly to the slightest twitch on my part. Nice and yet not so nice........ " Watch the run http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ja7PSwxjV8

BTW, that isn't Tessa doing all the barking!