This is a combined report on the last 3 shows,

• • • the first of Saturday, August 14th – hours before we took off on our trip to Durango,
• the second one on Saturday, August 28th and
• the third on Sunday, August 29th.

On a positive note, our fronts and pivots have improved considerably, but on the not so good side Quigley has been a bit stubborn recently, especially when it comes to exercises that are repetitive (e.g. “halt – down – sit”) and anything that involves going from a sit into a stand. He’s also been sniffing a bit more again recently on courses that don’t flow well.

Also, getting up before the crack of dawn to get to these last two trials must really have affected my brain, because I did some really dumb things in our Excellent run Sunday morning, like clapping my hands for my laggy dog to catch up with me, and accidentally touching him. Stuff like that are points off entirely my fault and I should know better.

Despite our lower than average scores this Saturday and Sunday (86/92 and 79/86) we still managed to get one placement on Saturday (4th in excellent) and two on Sunday (2nd in Excellent, 4th in Advanced). This was a fairly big show weekend with a good number of competing dogs, so we also earned 17 points (if I calculated correctly) for the 2010 Front & Finish rally ratings.