Yesterday Quigley and I competed in Rally Excellent for the first time. To me it’s a big deal, since this was the anniversary of our first-ever AKC Rally Novice and Novice Obedience legs last year.<\/p>\n
We got a score of 91 and a first place.<\/p>\n
Today didn’t go so well though. About 15 miles from the park where the trial was, my car suddenly gave up the ghost in the middle of the freeway. It was like someone had turned the ignition off. Luckily I had enough momentum to cross over 3 lanes and make it onto the shoulder.<\/p>\n
First I called my husband, and then Triple A to have the car towed. The tow truck arrived within about 10 minutes, and my husband shortly after. It’s amazing he didn’t get a speeding ticket, he was there so quick and had to drive about 35 miles!<\/p>\n
We took Quigley, his crate and all my other things from the Jeep and put it in the Honda, he sent me on my way and dealt with having the Jeep towed.<\/p>\n
I arrived at the dog show just after 9 am, with the Excellent B class already being judged. Checked in, got my course map, and just a few moments later I was told that I was up next. So I ran back to the car (parked quite far away), got Quigley and went into the ring.<\/p>\n
Since I hadn’t been there to walk the course I had to just muddle my way through, but it wasn’t too bad. Quigley was quite distracted, he didn’t sniff but stopped a lot to look around at what dogs in the other rings were doing. This wasn’t a moment of shining performance, yet not terrible either, so I was hoping we’d still qualify.<\/p>\n
But something always happens, right? At the last station of the course Quigley pooped in the ring. There hadn’t been enough time for him to do his business before it was our turn.<\/p>\n
Quigley hasn’t pooped in the ring ever since one of our very first (APDT) rally trials in 2006. I usually make it a point to give him a chance to go because I know he has to when we arrive somewhere, even if he did his “morning business” at home just 45 minutes or an hour earlier. Definitely a lesson learned – even if there’s a rush and the ring stewards are calling, ask them to wait just a minute and give him a chance to go.<\/p>\n
At least there was one good thing in all this: even stressed as I was, today I didn’t miss any signs!<\/p>\n
I still don’t know what the problem with the Jeep is – it wasn’t my 2001 4×4 (which is currently having a drive shaft replaced to get ready for more offroading) but our older 1997 2WD – which even with 190K miles on it has always been super-reliable.<\/p>\n
I didn’t think we’d ever actually need 3 cars for a 2-person household, but today it was a good thing having the Honda around.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Yesterday Quigley and I competed in Rally Excellent for the first time. To me it’s a big deal, since this was the anniversary of our first-ever AKC Rally Novice and Novice Obedience legs last year. We got a score of …<\/span> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,4],"tags":[5,13,29,11,28,10],"class_list":["post-139","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-akc-rally","category-rally-venues","tag-akc-rally","tag-embarrassments","tag-lesson-learned","tag-old-stuff","tag-re","tag-ring-experience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mordanna.com\/quigley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mordanna.com\/quigley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mordanna.com\/quigley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mordanna.com\/quigley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mordanna.com\/quigley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=139"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.mordanna.com\/quigley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":141,"href":"https:\/\/www.mordanna.com\/quigley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139\/revisions\/141"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mordanna.com\/quigley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mordanna.com\/quigley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mordanna.com\/quigley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}