Morey the Champion

 Morey and I didn't really have any performance expectations at the agility trial other than to have fun and improve our performance from last year. I never would have imagined how the weekend would have ended up!

First, I'll give a little agility background although be warned I am still figuring out a lot of it myself!

Each "run" has a set course and the dog has to complete all the obstacles in a certain order and within a set amount of time. If the dog accomplishes this the dog earns a "Q" (qualifying) and Qs add up to a title. If the dog misses an obstacle or makes a mistake they get a "fault" but they can still earn a place finish based on their time.



Morey got his first Q in the Intro Jumpers course. Normally he charges over the jumps and I can't keep up with him but that run was perfect! He responded to my cues and took each jump in order without wasting time doing laps around the course. Our teacher was watching and she yelled so loudly for us when we finished that I thought it was a whole crowd of people!

We had lots of people come up to us with compliments on our run. I think it was partly because a lot of people had seen his crazy runs from the night before so they were probably even more amazed when he pulled himself together and ran a clean course!

We almost got our second Q on the Regular 1 course but Morey flew off the dog walk and missed the contact. I should have told him to slow down but I was so focused on getting myself to the next obstacle that for a moment I forgot about what Morey was doing. Oops, lesson learned!

Our next Q was on Regular 2 (which was the Regular 1 course backward). He got a little mixed up on one jump but we managed to get back on track. Morey is so fast that we have enough time built in a for a few minor errors.

We got a third Q on the Weavers which made me very proud because Morey is still mastering the weave poles. We took it slow and steady and he made it through all 6 without any mistakes! Yay Morey!

Our last run of the day (almost 11 hours after we arrived in the morning) was Tunnelers. This is probably Morey's favorite run because he loves tunnels. He was pretty tired by that time so I wasn't sure how he was going to do. As I found out, it's easier to run him when he is tired because our speeds are more closely matched! We managed to pull out 1 more Q for a total of 4. He got 1st place based on speed in 7 of his 8 events. Not bad at all!

Video of his runs can be found on Morey's Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6rHjKOJttf1RzWWRmEIOmg . The videos were too large to upload here even though they are only a minute or so long.

I was pretty proud of our performance! It is so fun to have this new challenge to work on with Morey. We both enjoy taking on new training goals and seeing the progress we are making!