Baby Andrew Card

See, I've been crafting some..

A friend of mine just had her 2nd baby boy!  Since I made a card for his brother Cameron, I definitely needed to make him one of his own.  I can hardly wait to meet him!

I love whales/fish/ocean stuff for babies.  Andrew's nursery is gray and yellow, so I tried to stick with that.  I'm not going to lie, it ended up with way more blue that I originally set out to do, but I still like how it turned out.

Whales are so cute!

 And full of puns!  

I do have a couple more cards to put up here..you know when I find the time.  Team Rodgers has been pretty busy getting ready for their own baby.  We've only got about 60 days to go!  Yikes!

Jessica

NADAC Agility Trial 7-7-13 Day 3

Well, today was a total bust.  We didn't get one clean run all day.  I don't know where his focus went.  So I will spare you the crappy footage.
But what I do have are stills.  They had a photographer all weekend, so we got some nice shots.

As you can see..he was more focused on being pretty for the camera, than paying attention to Mama.

Oh well, we had 2 good days.

Jessica

NADAC Agility Trial 7-6-13 Day 2

Today was a short day for us.  We only had 2 events.  The plan was to take it easy this weekend, I really ended up entering more events than I originally planned...but that sheet just kept filling up while I was filling it out.

Quick!  Some footage..



First up for us was another go at Regulars.  The course was really set in our favor, and I hoped this would be another win..well in some ways it was.  He started off great and hit the weave poles with a good amount of focus.  I had to call him back to repeat them, well he weaved through them backwards to get to me, which cost us a 10 point deduction.  Damn.  He kept great speed all through the end.  We were under the course time, but the deduction prevented us from getting the Q.



We finished up our day with Open Jumpers.  Another nice course.  He had great speed, stayed with me the whole time and we finished strong.  This was our first Open Q!!  I'm so proud of my big boy!

Good boys get rewarded with tummy rubs!!

Tomorrow is a full full day.  Hopefully we'll keep up the good work.

Jessica

NADAC Agility Trial 7-5-13 Day 1

This is our last trial before Baby Rodgers gets here, so we wanted to make sure we got out and did our best.
Oliver had a pretty great first day.
This trial is a little bit of a change of pace, it's inside at Sports City in Blue Springs.  It's great to be off the dirt for a change.
This trial also is different because they added 2 extra events, and changed the order of the runs.  We're hoping that it will give us a little bit of an advantage in certain events.
To the footage!


We started off with a BANG!  Not typical for Friday night, but Regulars was first up.  If you recall, Oliver surprised all of us with a Q last trial we went to...I had high hopes.  And it turned out to be a good thing.  He pulled it off again!  He had to repeat the weaves once, but we got it on the second try.  We also beat the course time by 10 seconds.  When he's on, he's really on.



Touch N Go was the second event for us.  This is typically his best event.  We're in the Open class for this event.  You can hear..just as we were getting ready to go, they decide to make an announcement..for a full 30 seconds.  I think it really threw us off our game.  He took the tunnel first, when he was supposed to take the dog walk..and we had a little trouble at the end too.  Damn.



Tunnelers was last on our list for Friday night.  We've been chasing the Novice title for a year.  Well folks, we finally got it!!  This was a great run, and a great course.  It felt good all the way to the end.  His speed was great.  He really pulled out all the stops.  I'm so proud of my boy!

Here we are at the end of the day, with our shiny shiny new Novice Tunnelers Title!!

We're back for a short day tomorrow..stay tuned.

Jessica

NADAC Agility Trial 5-12-13 Day #3

Woah, I'm a super slacker.  Sorry..this week sort of got away from us.
I do have the details on our final day of competition at the trial from last weekend.  Man, I really need to get my act together.


Open Jumpers was first.  This course was so easy..and nicely laid out.  I had high hopes that this would be the one!  The one to earn our first Open Q.  Well it wasn't.  We had a tunnel mishap..not sure what happened there.  But we fixed it, and we were making up the time I thought we just might have it.  But he decided to take a jump that wasn't even in his path, much less on course.  Crazy dog.  I am glad however that we have a little Open experience under our belts before next time.


Novice Regulars.  You know how I feel about this event.  We keep trying, and this time we succeeded!  Again, a really great course.  The weave poles we in the middle of the course this time, so I had hoped it would help him keep his focus, and it did.  He was going a bit fast and you can see me try to slow him down, but he missed the entrance the first time..but he came right back around and got it on the second try!  Way to go Olliedog!


It mostly went down hill from here.  We had 2 chances at our Novice Tunnelers title, and we blew it both times.  Not enough speed in this first round.


And an off course in this second round.

We're going to keep at it.  We're going to attempt to trial in July.  I'll be pretty pregnant by then, but we're going to give it a go if I'm up for it.  We also might debut Coraline that weekend.  It should be interesting either way.

Stay tuned.

Jessica

NADAC Agility Trial 5-11-13 Day #2

We were back at it for a full day of trialing.
We had high hopes since Friday night went so well, but today was more of a Barrel of Monkeys, with a few small victories thrown in.

On to the footage!!



We started our morning off with a little Touch N Go.  This would have been a beautiful run.  I don't know what's gotten into him lately, but he's been super fast all weekend.  As we were coming towards the camera, there are three hoops, he took all 3 at lightning speed and didn't even bother to look at me.  What was SUPPOSED to happen, he was supposed to take only 2 of them, then turn back for the tunnel.  He did however keep the great speed through the whole course, we did miss a hoop in the final stretch, but at that point it didn't matter, he'd already gone off course.  I was pleased with him that we hit all the discriminations. You can't see but we took the blue tunnel under the A-frame.  And if you follow along at all, you know the A-frame is his favorite.



We do Regular rounds mostly just for kicks.  We still have weaving problems..I don't know what his deal is, or how to fix it.  This course had a few problem spots for us.  He took a pause on the far side of the ring because I called him to me too soon.  My plan was to be on top of it because the next thing in his line of sight after that hoop was the A-frame.  I wanted to make sure he made the turn.  He did, but after a pause.  He was going so fast that he kept on running to that red jump near the end.  You can see we took the weave poles way too fast and he was super amped up..and really we never have a prayer of completing them accurately..but I'm pleased with his speed..that's hard for me to get out of him.



Again if you follow along, you know that we earned our Novice Jumpers Title, meaning we can move up to the Open class, and we did.  This was our very first Open run.  We started off pretty good, but then you can see I forget that I wanted to cross in front of him, and in my haste to make it happen, I kicked up some dirt, well he thought it deserved investigating..after that I had trouble getting it together, and I jacked up the serpentine pattern too.  You can see I push him left too soon, then I have to stop to get him over to the correct side of the jump.  He finished fast though and really for a first effort we couldn't have asked for more.   We were about 10 seconds over time.  I like to think that if I had my handling together that we would have made it.  I'm excited to give it another try tomorrow morning.

That's right, one more day in the ring.  We're getting 2 chances at our Tunnelers title tomorrow..wish us luck!

Jessica 

NADAC Agility Trial 5-10-13 Day #1

I didn't fall off the wagon, we've just been really busy.
But I'm back now, and I've got some agility footage for you.  We're currently participating in a trial this weekend.
Friday night, the usual suspects, Hoopers and Touch N Go.  We were up for a TnG title so I was pretty excited when we got to the trial site.  But they threw a wrench in my plans!  As we were walking in, they were making an announcement about a new obstacle..the barrel.  It's just that, a barrel, and you go around it. All that is fine and good, except we have never practiced it, or even seen one before.. what is this..some kind of pony show?

We did however have a great Friday night...I'll prove it with the footage.



Hoopers was first up, as always.  The course seemed like it would flow very well and that we wouldn't have any trouble.  I was slightly concerned because Oliver had been particularly fired up all afternoon, so I was afraid that perhaps he would bolt.  But he didn't.  He did take off at high speed..you can see me lagging behind, I'm not as fast as I once was.  He only had one tiny pause on the course, but nailed everything else perfectly.  He kept up his speed which makes me so happy.  We finished in 2nd place and got the Q!  We were almost a full 5 seconds under the course time!



Now for the pressure.  Touch N Go.  All we need is one more Q to earn our Novice Title.  This is where the barrel comes into play.  The dog can go around it in either direction, and apparently if you need to go around it with them, you can.  This course also seemed pretty great, except for the barrel, I wasn't sure how he'd handle it.  We had a few practice tries that he did fairly well, so I was crossing my fingers.  He NAILED it!  He had zero trouble out there.  The course played to our strengths, having him take the contacts instead of the tunnels.  We took 1st place, and a Q!  This of course earned us our Title!  We spanked the course time by almost 12 seconds.  Way to go Oliver!

We're in it for a full day tomorrow, so be ready!

Jessica