Christmas in July

Last weekend was the Missouri Rhineland Club's agility show in Pacific, MO, and I entered Zipper in Novice. Zipper has his Novice titles, but he needs experience and seasoning. This was a brand new location for him and I wanted to see how he did.

The location, an indoor soccer arena, was, well, interesting. Two-thirds of the arena was taken up with a single ring. The back third was crating for us, and there was a bit of crating around the outside. Truly a tiny facility, much smaller than CCSC. The weird thing was, they only had lights on over the ring itself. The crating area was dark. As in, we all wished we'd brought flashlights dark. Apparently that was to help keep the arena cool, but along with the halogen vapor lights that left triple-shadows in the ring, the entire effect was that you just couldn't see worth a darn. I figured if Zipper did well here, we were in pretty good shape.

Being a single-ring trial, all of Jumpers was run first, from Excellent to Novice. They then brought in the contact equipment and switched the ring to Standard, and ran that Ex to Novice. Which meant a very long day.

In Jumpers, there was a C shaped tunnel to a black tire, and many dogs missed the tire, including Zipper. In the odd light it was just hard to see. Zipper also ducked a couple of other jumps but otherwise had a good run and a very nice last line. No Q of course, but he didn't seem fazed by the arena. In Standard, Zipper ran to the broad jump then screeched to a halt, leaned forward, sniffed it, and jumped back like it had a bag of snakes under it. I circled him and tried again. This time he came up to it, then dodged to the right and gave a little kicking jump as he went by. I thought, "forget it," and went on. The rest of the run was lovely. No Q, but that wasn't why I was there anyway.

I decided not to go back Sunday. I'd learned what I needed to on Saturday, and it had been after 5:30 before they were done with my ring. So I stayed home and was lazy Sunday. At about 7:30 Sunday night, I got a call from Patti. They hadn't left until after 5:30. So I was glad I hadn't come back. Then she said, "and we picked up your ribbon for you."

"What ribbon?"

"Your ribbon. From yesterday."

"Um, Patti, I didn't Q yesterday."

"Yes you did, you got first place!"

"No, I didn't."

"Well wait a minute, it's in the car, I'll go tell you what you won."

Turns out that I got a Q in Standard, even though Zipper never did the broad jump. Oops. The thing is, by this time it was too late to change it. What's even more weird is that I got the Q, but with 90 points, which means I was assessed two mistakes. The only thing he messed up was the broad jump. I mean, if I'm going to get a fake Q, it should be an accurate fake Q yes?

Oh well. Christmas in July. I'm sure at some point in the near future I'll be NQd on a run when I should have qualified. Such is the way of agility.