Saturday was Keystone Agility Club's indoor trial.  I had Whisper entered in 4 classes, Gamblers, Standard, Snooker - all Starters and then Advanced Jumpers.  We skipped out on Advanced Jumpers because it was going to be run late in the evening and we had a long day.



Anyway, for those of you following my progress in agility withWhisper, you may know that we've been working on stress issues.  Last fall, it was a rare moment that she would do weave poles in a trial.  After finally doing them, we wouldn't make time because she would get stressed and slow.



Well, I saw another side of Whispy on Saturday.  The first course was Starters Gamblers.  We've played Gamblers a few times but we don't really have many distance skills so we never Q.  Well, we had a great run which included weave poles which she performed flawlessly and she did the gamble without hesitation.  I thought it was an easy gamble - not much distance but the angles made it difficult for some dogs and they wouldn't go back out laterally away from their handlers to do the final jump and they back jumped.  Whisper did her gamble and we got a Q (Qualifying Score!)  And she made 5th place!  That's out of the ribbons but a lot of the dogs were much more experienced than Whisper and I think 5th out of all the dogs in the class is pretty impressive.  With that Q, it meant that if we qualified in our Standard run, Whisper would get her AD (Agility Dog) title.  That was not in the cards for Saturday...



But our Standard run was still a sweet run and I'm still feeling high from it.  If I didn't mess up in the beginning, we would have Q'ed.  Whisper was having some stress at the start line which prevented me from leading out and I dropped my shoulder slightly and didn't support the second jump - she went around, back jumped the second jump which disqualified us but we could still run if we fixed it.  So I sent her the correct way over the jump and continued our run.  She ran so fast and so confident.  She built up speed after the 4th obstacle and didn't slow down.  Whisper doesn't normally run with distance and obstacle committment - basically meaning I have to run up to the piece of equipment before she'll take it and she rarely drives ahead of me to an obstacle.  Well, she did on Saturday.  She committed so early that I had no problems getting in my crosses even in a couple of tricky spots.  She drove ahead of me into the weave poles that I had to boogie to get ahead of her for a front cross after the weaves ( I never would have attempted a front cross after the poles this fall and I would have agonized over it causing massive stress for both of us). Well it was no problem on Saturday - except catching up to her.  She drove ahead of me to the table that she was in a down and starting her 5 second count before I reached her and I was able to lead out on the table to get into position for the last sequence which was tricky.  We nailed it.  She ran like the wind.  When I got her results, she ran 20 seconds under the standard course time for dogs her height.  That's amazing.  When we Q, we're usually 5 seconds under course time, not 20!!!!!!  Let's hope we can keep some of this pace and happy attitude.  We had such a great time.  Oh, we got a Q in Snooker too.  What a good girl.  Whisper knew she rocked it big time.