OAJ and Weekend Agility News

The biggest news of the weekend was Charley got his Open Agility Jumpers title!

He ended the weekend with a perfect score, 100/100, and was the only dog out of all the group that qualified!

On Friday, he also got a 2nd leg towards his standard title.

 Good job Charley!!!

Big Weekend in Agility

Sorry, we've been absent from blog land lately. Weekends have been really busy around here doing lots of fun summer things. Including agility! This weekend, Char and I have a two day trial, and it could be a very big weekend for us. We are two legs away from Chars novice standard title, and one leg away from Charley's Open Jumpers title. I'm pretty nervous, not for the legs we need to get, but if Charley passes Friday, we have to move up to Excellent. I know this doesn't mean much to you people reading this, but basically this is the highest level of agility, and really the highest level of any event we've trailed in. I just read this article from an agility blog I follow, and will try not to look ahead to the possible move up, and really concentrate on the levels at hand. But you never know, and that's in the back of my mind....

From Agilitynerd.com:

I sometimes get questions from novice handlers asking about preparing for competition and especially about getting stressed out at competitions. Stress and anxiety they happen to us all.

But you know what? The more you do it the easier it gets.

You will make mistakes.

You will learn from those mistakes and know what to expect and then you'll know what to do.

You will forget things (collar on? collar off? brought your dog? entered in the trial/run? treats? crate? the course sequence?)

You will find that the trial tests your skillsand uncovers your weaknesses and then you'll work on improving those skills.

You'll train out the "but we can't" excuses and you will become a better team.

You'll hang out with people who support you and your goals (and you'll stay away from the rest).

And the whole experience will get easier. The packing, travel, hotel, trial check in, course walk throughs, warm up, run, cool down; all will become things you know how to do and with practice will become second nature.

Because if you do anything enough times you will own it!

You can move past the anxiety and overcome the stress with one important mantra:

Just DO Agility

--We will try our hardest and have confidence that all our hard work and practice will see us through!!