A Long Weekend

It didn’t go as well as I’d hoped, but it went a lot better than I’d expected. We NQ’d our first run so spectacularly, I’m pretty sure we couldn’t have done worse if we’d tried. Reyna was completely distracted, and, not even realizing what I was doing, I tapped her going into the first exercise to get her attention. Well, touching the dog except at specific times causes an automatic NQ. Reyna acted like she’d never heard the word “sit” and we ended up repeating 5 of the exercises, I had to repeat commands several times, and we ended up going about 30 seconds over the time limit. So, we officially NQ’d twice, and our score was so low, we couldn’t have qualified, anyway.

Our second run went much better. We requested medical consideration because of her hips and epi meds, and got an extra 30 seconds on the clock. Turned out we didn’t need it, barely. We finished in 3:58, with a score of 191, and got our first qualifying ribbon.

Sunday morning, Reyna knew the word sit, she just didn’t want to do it. The judge actually gave us an extra minute, because she saw how stiffly Reyna was moving. We had to repeat a couple of exercises - including the very first one, because I completely blanked on which way was left and went to the right, instead - and I had to repeat some commands and just wait on Reyna to decide to give in and sit. We ended up NQ’ing because of time – that round took us 5:14. I also touched her just before the bonus, so we didn’t get any points with that, but at least that didn’t NQ us. We had 170 points exactly and would have qualified, if we hadn’t gone over our time limit.

Reyna felt a bit better in the afternoon, but was totally distracted again. The poor girl was completely exhausted. We had to repeat two exercises, and she really wasn’t paying attention to me, but we got through it. Amazingly enough, we passed the “Finish” sign 4 seconds before our time limit ended. After our bonus, we had a score of 190, and actually took 5th place.


All in all, I’d say it was a good first trial. We didn’t title, but we earned two Legs and even managed to place in one of the courses. It was so obvious by the way Reyna was moving that she didn’t feel good, but she got through it, and (eventually) did everything I asked of her. Everyone there was so nice, and cheered for us when we got our ribbons. I’m pretty darn proud of that little girl.