Excellent JWW Agility leg #1

We had perfect fall weather for this weekend's Staten Island Companion Dog Club's agility trial.  Jam made me proud with her jumpers runs and earned her first qualifying leg on Saturday, in the 24" Excellent A class with a 3rd place!  To earn the AXJ or Agility Excellent Jumpers title, Jam needs to earn two more qualifying legs.  Jam also has one AX or Agility Excellent standard leg so she is on her way to earning these high level titles.

She came very close to qualifying on Friday in JWW, with a terrific run but slipped on the mud and missed the tunnel entrance at the end of the course.  The standard courses were a challenge for us with a very difficult weave pole entry on Friday, that wasn't doable for us and on Saturday, Jam slipped off the teeter.  She did manage to nail her weaves in three of our four runs and had awesome start line stays.  We'll be working on speeding up her weaves as well as teaching independent weaves and difficult entries; important skills at the excellent level, especially if we want to be competitive.  I also tried to apply some of what we learned at the Tracy Sklenar seminar and I feel that although we are a work in progress, Jam was more responsive and my handling was improved.

A highlight of the trial was seeing many friends that I have not seen in a long time since we have not trialed locally in awhile.  It was exciting to see how well their dogs ran and cheer them on.