A Day In The Life Of An Agility Trial

A Typical Agility Trial Day:

4:00 am - Wake up. Feed and Potty Dogs.  Shower and Get Dressed.

5:00 am - On the Road.

7:30 am - Arrive at Trial Site.  Check In.  Unload Car.

8:30-ish am - My First Run Of the Day.

8:30-ish am until 6:30-ish pm - watch runs, cheer on friends, discuss dogs and agility stuff, hope for a couple of good runs, and do a lot of waiting around.  In between all that, you get to have your couple minutes of time in the ring having fun with your dog.                

6:30 pm - Load up car.

6:45 pm - On the Road.

9:15 pm - Arrive Home.  Feed and Potty Dogs.

9:30 pm - Go To Bed

That is a fairly typical day at an agility trial.  Since I live in a city that requires travel to any dog event, a lot of time is spent driving and sometimes staying in hotels if I am at a trial for more than one day.  This weekend was no exception.  A day trip to Calgary on Saturday for an agility trial.

The last trial I was at, I came home very frustrated.  Maggie was slow and uninterested that entire day.  Yesterday, the only thing that I wanted from her, was to have fun.  I tried to keep her out of her crate as much as possible during the day.  She gets depressed when she has to stay in her crate all day.  I also took Bosley along and I would play with him right before Maggie's runs to try to get her more excited to be out with me.  Guess what?  Maggie had fun the entire day.  She stayed excited the whole day, even into her last run.  She did not knock any bars or miss any contacts (ETA - I just re-watched the video and I forgot that she missed her teeter contact - twice!  She is usually so careful on the teeter.)  She had one set of weaves that was super fast, but she popped the last pole.  I tried to make her correct it and she back-weaved with lots of enthusiasm, so I left it at that.  I did not want to press the issue with the weaves - I just want her to do them happily at a trial.  We had no "Q"s because of a few little errors, but I was very happy with Maggie the whole day.  Here is a video of a few highlights from our runs.

There is also a video of Bosley at his agility debut!  I entered Bosley FEO (for exhibition only) in one run yesterday - because of Bosley's size, I am still not jumping him at his full jump height yet, so he just jumped 16" at the trial.  I entered him in a Gamblers run just to see how he would do at an agility trial.  He did great, especially considering he had never been in the arena before and it was filled with new smells and new people.  He was very excited to be out there and even gave the weaves a good try.  His body is so long that if he gets going fast, he skips a pole in the middle.  I just wanted him to go out and have fun, which he did.  To top it all off, he even got the closing gamble in his run.  I am very excited to start trialling him more, but I do think that we will have some start line issues and there is always the issue of him just wanting to take all his favorite obstacles, which are not necessarily the ones that he is supposed to take.