NADAC Agility Trial 12-14-12

Since I have to work this weekend we were only able to compete this one Friday night.  We only entered Hoopers and Touch N Go, since his weaves have been less than great lately.

We left Coraline at home and took just a few things since we weren't going to be gone for very long.  He was pretty fired up all evening, since he got to be an only child for a little while..and we didn't have our usual set up once we got to the trial site. 

Hoopers went pretty terribly.  The run was going to be difficult anyway.  He took off like a bat out of hell and didn't pay attention at all.  

We were experimenting with some new filming techniques (read: Jonathan was using his new phone and doesn't know what he's doing)  So it accidentally got recorded in double time.  Since it was a disaster, and super fast, circus music would be appropriate.  So, it won't be featured here.

But I do have our second run.  

This is Novice Touch N Go.  For those of you not following along, it focuses on the Contact obstacles.  It had a couple of difficult spots.  Right out of the gate is a discrimination between the tunnel and the A-frame.  Luck worked in our favor and he took the tunnel like he was supposed to.  After that is a pretty tight little ring of hoops I was afraid I wouldn't have enough time to make it through, but that went well too.  The only hiccup we had was he wanted to go back up the back side of the A-frame, but I was able to get him to come back to me and we finished strong!  It felt really nice, and it was a great comeback after our Hoopers disaster.  If you listen to the audio you can hear Jon's creepy voice saying "yes yes" once he realized we were clear of the difficult parts of the course.  

I'm going to toot our horn a little...(it's my show and I can do what I want)  The course is the same for all levels (Elite, Open, Novice) and several of the upper level dogs made mistakes costing them their clean runs.  In our height class there were 5 dogs..Oliver was the only dog to Qualify.  I couldn't be happier!  Oh yeah, even despite our hiccup, we came in 12 SECONDS UNDER TIME!!  He can be fast if he wants to. 

So this was the final trial of the year.  I plan to start taking Cora to training in hopes that she'll be ready in 5 months when she's old enough to compete.  Our biggest concern is that she'll be a runner-offer.  She loves her public.  

I have a card on deck..and not many other craft projects planned.  I'm hoping to find some time to get my craft on before the year is over.  Oh, and we're planning a mini vacation, so there will be photos of that soon.  

Jessica

The Dad's Birthday Card Blowout

Two birds, one stone.

I made some cards this fall for my Dad, and FIL birthdays.  

Man-cards are really difficult, as we've discussed before..no bows, jewels, or ribbon..lame!

 I made this one for my Father-in-law.

 I've never used this stamp set, but I really like how it turned out. 

 I made this one for my dad.  His birthday is the day before Halloween. 

 I ran the whole thing through my Cuttlebug to get the texture. 

I've got a few more cards to show.  I've got a baby card on deck, those are my favorite for sure.
Maybe we'll have a little Christmas Spectacular of my adorable dogs before Christmas gets here.

Jessica

Peacock Birthday Card

I'm trying to do my Blogger duty and get some posts up.  It's been crazy busy, as usual...and computing just isn't high on the list...playing games and facebook, yes, editing and posting photos..not so much. 

My mother had a birthday a few weeks back, so I made her a card..which is about all she'll let you do. 

She loves peacocks...so much that she's dedicated an entire new house to them. 

And I like shiny...oooh pretty. I used my iRock to set the gems, so they never come off...it's so much easier than trying to glue them.  

 The inside is pretty simple, you know for a nice birthday greeting. 

The holiday season is quickly approaching.  Team Rodgers put up the tree this week...with way more help than we needed.  We're preparing for the last agility trial of the year. We've taken our Christmas card photos, and they're being printed right now, so look for them in a mail box near you.  

Jessica

Cora-palooza

Wow!

Sorry so much for the delay..it seems that my Picasa storage was filled, and I had to purchase more...I didn't realize the internet had a max.

Whatever.

Anyway on with Cora-palooza!!

This was the very first picture of our baby girl!  She was about 3 days old, and looks like a little old man.  She's come a long way.

She used to be so tiny.  She can still fit under this bench..but there's definitely less head room.  When we got her she weighed less than 2 pounds. 

She was so sweet. 

 Now she all grown up..and whopping 6.2 pounds

 Sometimes she's sweet,

 But most of the time she's Cora.  Snarky, bossy, and sassy. 

We had a little birthday cupcake on her actual birthday which was November 4th. 

She passed all of her PetSmart training classes, but we haven't taken the Canine Good Citizen test yet.  She wasn't quite old enough yet to pass once we finished the classes.  We still work with her, and actually she's showing great agility prospect.  We plan to begin taking her to classes in a few weeks.  She's a little spitfire and she'll be unstoppable.  

She's definitely not what we expected when we took on another Pomeranian, but we love her anyway, and wouldn't change a thing.  

Jessica

NADAC Agility Trial 11-4-12 Day 3

The 3rd and final day of the Trial.
We had a couple thing on the line this day, we need just one more leg (read: good, fast, clean, qualifying run) for both our Jumpers, and Tunnelers title.
Unfortunately today was a day of disappointments.   
Before we get to the footage..I'd like to tell you a story about how daylight savings doesn't always go as planned.  Team Rodgers woke up Sunday feeling refreshed.  Half of the Team was in the shower..the other half looked at the clock on her phone.  The plan was to leave Casa de Rodgers around 715 to arrive at the trial at 8.  When the phone was checked it said 715...so some time math was done, and the nightstand clock was checked, the time was Googled, and ultimately, the "phone guy's" phone managed to set itself back 2 hours!!  He thought it was 615, but really it was 715!  So what was going to be a peaceful morning, was a mad dash to the trial site.  Live and learn.  We learned that you should always set a backup alarm..and that Apple products are superior..as they set their own time to the proper time. Yay Apple!
Now the footage.


Novice Jumpers. This was supposed to be our 3rd and final leg for Oliver's Novice Jumpers Title.  Well..things don't always go as planned.  I had made some plans based on his usual speed.  You can see as soon as I release him, I can tell he's going much faster than I anticipated.  He unfortunately plows into a jump.  It doesn't really slow him down at all, but I was shaken, worried he might be hurt.  He took the next pattern faster that I thought, so I ended up on the wrong side headed back near the start line.  He kept great speed, and I was mostly happy, but too bad we knocked that bar (which he's never done before). He's totally fine, and it didn't shake him at all.


Novice Regular. I didn't really have high hopes based on his previous performance.  We started off good, but of course, the weave poles didn't happen..so it's probably good you can't really see them because of the A-frame.  We went on to miss the Tunnel/Dog Walk discrimination.  He was supposed to go over the Walk. Turd.


Novice Tunnelers. We needed one more leg for our Novice Tunnelers Title.  While this was a good run, it wasn't fast enough, so we didn't get it.  We had one pause at the dark blue tunnel, which put us over the time.  I was hoping he'd be a little faster, since he'd been favoring tunnels all weekend...but sadly, no.


Novice Tunnelers. This was the last run of the trial, and my last hope for a Tunnelers Title..Well he totally spaced, and walked off.  I knew that we'd never finish in time, so we were eliminated.  I was pretty proud of his "wrap" out of the dark blue tunnel, but it went south after that.  On the outside of the course people were packing up the food and other stuff...distracting him.

Overall, we had 1 successful Jumpers run, giving us 1st place, and a Qualifying run.  Other than that..it was either too slow, or serious obstacle faults.
We learned a lot...and we've got a lot of work to do before the next one.  Like a lot of work.  His weaves had been good, so I'm not really sure what happened.  As a matter of fact, today in the yard he sped through the poles like he owned them..turd.
Coraline has moved into the favorite position, and it's only 6 months until she can compete.  She actually had a birthday on Sunday, so the next post is going to be a little Cora-palooza for her 1st birthday.

Jessica

NADAC Agility Trial 11-3-12 Day 2

Day 2 of the trail got started very early.. First dog was on the line at 8am.  This judge doesn't play...he's prompt for sure.  We barely made it in time for me to walk the first course.

Day 2 was mostly a terrible day.  He wasn't performing as well as I knew he could.  But if I didn't share our failures as well as our successes what kind of blogger would I be? Let's get straight to the footage.


Novice Touch N Go #2. Ok, so really this was an Ok run. We just wasted too much time trying to get in that one hoop the right way. And my camera man had a little blurry problem. Another thing that was tricky for us was the "wrap" after the A-frame, he had to go through what looked like the last hoop, and turn completely around and keep going on the course.

Novice Weavers #2. This run was pretty much terrible. It took several times to get the first set of weaves, but I was so happy when he finally did. But it was short lived. After giving up on the second set, Oliver decided he was done, and ran off course. We didn't complete it, so we were eliminated.

Novice Regular #1. This was sort of a disaster as well. We started off strong, but he wasn't supposed to take the A-frame. He looks pretty proud of himself as he pauses at the top. He was supposed to take the tunnel underneath it. The weaves didn't go well either. At the end when he was supposed to take the A-frame, he went all the way around and took the other side of the tunnel. Crazy beast.

This run symbolizes the dog I compete with. This is Classic Oliver. He was wonderful from start to finish. One tiny visit to the bar setter in the chair that looked like Daddy..but he came right back to it. Fast in the final straight away. I couldn't be happier. This earned us 1st place and more importantly, a Q. It was the second leg toward his Jumpers Title.
The whole day was pretty rough. I was disappointed for sure. I'm not sure we would have come back if he hadn't pulled through in the last run.

Day 3 was something else, check back soon.

Jessica

NADAC Agility Trial 11-2-12 Day 1

Oh man!
Team Rodgers is out on the agility circuit again.
We're playing in a 3 day weekend trail put on by U2 Kan Du Agility in Lawrence.
Today was Day 1, Friday night.  This group is one of the few that puts on events on Friday nights.
Too bad for us, this Friday we did not reign victorious.
You know I've got some footage.


Novice Hoopers.  Our first event of the trial.  He was a bit slow, but overall a clean run.  We were a bit over time, so NQ for us.  Darn.  We were hoping to get the Q which would be our second leg towards our title.  Next time.


Novice Touch N Go.  I knew we were screwed from the start.  The second obstacle was a Tunnel/A-frame discrimination...where you are supposed to climb the frame...well Oliver decided he didn't want to do that.  The rest of the run was ok, and he had no trouble taking the A-frame the second time around.  And of course, we took plenty of time to sniff the dirt.


Novice Weaves.  This was a disaster from the beginning.  Oliver mostly refused to weave properly all night.  He wasn't getting it in the practice arena..and he certainly wasn't getting it in the ring.  He kept approaching from the wrong side.  We half completed 2 of the sets, giving us many fault points, and giving us a NQ.  We've had a hell of a time with Weavers, even though at home, he does fine. We'll keep working.

It was a full night.  The pomeranians are sleepy. We're going to hit the sack early and hit it hard again on Saturday.
I'll give a total breakdown of this weekend's winnings after the trial is over.
Happy Friday

Jessica