TBAC

Today is my first chance to write about the ups and downs of a trial just past, since I started this blog.

This past weekend I was at the TBAC trial at Dream Park. The weather was very nice, though we were indoors. The indoor environment was less than ideal as the dirt of Dream Park migrated into the atmosphere, leaving me with gritty teeth and eyes. Still, we had a pretty good weekend.

Our first run on Saturday Darcy dropped a bar. After examining the video I couldn't see any real reason for it. He has been learning to take off closer to the jumps than he used to, and he took off pretty close to the one he dropped. I think there's a good chance that the unusually soft and deep footing of Dream Park contributed to the bar coming down. The mistake left me feeling rather disappointed, though not as bad as these things used to do. The rest of our runs for the weekend were clear, though, so after the disappointing start we had a really nice weekend!

Our Standard run on Sunday was a bit of an adventure. I handled the weavepole entrance poorly leaving Darcy confused, but we recovered without a fault. Then Darcy came halfway off the table but got back on, also without a fault. I was able to leave him on the table while I walked away towards the next obstacle (something we've been working on), so that was a good thing. (I'll see if I can post a video of this run when I get home tonight.)

One of the best things of the weekend was that one of the judges was Clyde Closson, one of our teachers at Y2!

Probably the worst thing that happened was the Sunday morning dropping of my iPad (by me), which cracked the screen. I seem to have the dropsies lately--I did the same thing with my iPhone a few weeks ago. I got the iPad replaced today, though, so things didn't turn out too badly.

This coming Friday we are at an outdoor trial in Freehold, NJ. Predictions call for temperatures in the 90s! Yikes! We had to pull out of Saturday and Sunday to fly out to Oregon for my mother's memorial service. So at least we only have to suffer one day in the heat.

Rob