Gracie, My Agility Queen

I'm going to start with a very big brag: Gracie earned her third Novice B Jumpers Q on Sunday! This means that she earned her NAJ title in one trial--her first trial at that! That doesn't happen very often. She's going to be quite the serious competitor, I think. I'm now taking wagers on who gets out of Open first, Gracie or Mimi.

I always called Iz my 'gility queen. After this weekend, I am passing that title to Gracie, at least for a little while.

What's even more amazing is that her third Jumpers run came after I had to pull her from her Standard run earlier because she was behaving so oddly, hunched over and refusing to do any obstacles. I took her outside and she had terrible shooting diarrhea. Several times. Ew.

Everyone agreed it was a combination of rich treats, excitement, stress, and a very long three-day trial. Still, Gracie is a real trooper. After she'd had a couple more trips outside, she seemed to be feeling much better. Back to her bouncy, tail wagging self. So I decided to run her in that very last class.

It was a wonderfully glorious run, too. Not pretty (had to fudge the weaves) but I did some fancy handling including two front crosses (yes, in a Novice course!) and she was right there with me. She just sailed through the middle of the course, stretching out and taking the jumps with lovely form.

Mimi and I didn't manage to pull it together on Sunday. The girls were engaging in horrible screaming crate fighting while I was trying to walk the Open Jumpers course so by the time I left the course two times to go up and try to separate and cover their crates, I was in a pretty foul mood. I wasn't able to muster up the happy voice until second half of the course. Since Mimi missed the SECOND jump (my fault entirely) but continued to take the third (so it wasn't a refusal but a wrong course, which is not allowed in Jumpers), the entire run was a wash. I finally did remember to use the happy voice and she just blasted ahead. I don't think I did right by her in that run but I tried.

Something very odd happened during our Open Standard briefing. Standard that day was being judged by the out-of-town judge (it was a two-ring, three-judge trial--had to be with more than 890 runs on Saturday and nearly that many on Sunday). Anyway, after the usual AKC safety review, she said, I want to remind you all of something.

During the Excellent classes, the judge said, a handler sent her dog off course with an incorrect hand movement. Even though the dog performed the rest of the course with no errors, the handler was glaring at the dog and speaking tersely. The judge said she could see the dog crumbling with each obstacle. At the end of the run, the handler gave no praise to the dog, jammed the leash on it, and left the ring clearly angry.

The judge paused, then said, I want you all to remember that many of us would give anything for just one more run...and the entire Open class, about 30 women and a few men, started crying. My first thought was that I would give anything, anything, to be able to run with my Iz again. Then I thought of my friend DSL and her Bullet. We would indeed give anything.

The judge looked around at all of us, and then she started crying too. Wiping tears from her face, she said, oh, I didn't mean to make you cry. Be happy, love your dogs, have a good run.

She was still wiping her eyes as she started off to measure the course yardage, and the entire group of us walked the course sniffing and trying not to be too obvious about wiping our eyes.

I know she didn't mean to make us sad.

And I know that I never, ever want to be that handler.