Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Master Agility Jumper

Sunday Maggie earned her MXJ, which is 10 qualifying runs at the Excellent level in AKC agilty. Woody was the only other dog of mine who managed to get an MXJ and he was 9 years old when he did. Maggie is only 4 years old. We have so many years now to work on the next level.


Friday
Jumpers was easy compared to last week. Maggie had a burr up her butt and we qualified with time to spare. Standard was another story. She stopped on her way to the table, sniffed, and stopped on her way from the table and sniffed. Way over time.

Saturday
Jumpers was hard. The judge said it was a 20 second course and a good dog could do it in 20. OK. I guess mine is bad. We made it by the skin of our teeth. Zero points, but we Q'd. Standard was a slow mess. Maggie stopped on everything. Got to do something different.

Sunday
Final Q in JWW for our MXJ. Got our one point. Now for Standard. I was ready to try something else. I remembered how excited Maggie gets when I bring out her chicken, so when she slowed to a crawl on the dog walk to watch the other ring, I said "I've got chicken!" Man did she speed up. right off the dog walk, over a jump to the teeter. Fastest teeter ever. Finally the A-frame. CHICKEN!!!!  She came flying down. Q and 9 points. Our most ever.


It's fun to unlock Miss Maggie's secrets. I'm going to continue looking for ways to get her going. In the meantime, I'm looking at getting a new puppy. It's been so hard to accept the fact that I was just going to have Maggie to run and my fast sheltie was sitting in a crate just watching us. I was going to spend my years racking up points one at a time and maybe get a MACH someday. A friend brought her sheltie puppies to the show and I spent three days playing with them. Two other people told me about other sheltie puppies. It's like the skies opened up and dropped puppies down on me. It had to be a sign.


After much deliberation including two nights of tossing and turning, we decided to give it a go. I'm bringing the puppy home for a week to try with Maggie. I hope she'll be OK with it all. The wee thing just reminded me of Woody, whose talents were squandered with extremely bad training. I have the chance to try it again the right way.


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