We Heart Twilight Trials

Did I mention that the heart in the title is a very big heart indeed?

Last weekend we had the State Trial for Strategic Pairs - a new event held as a triple twilight trial. I confess that I'm not the most enthusiastic participant in pairs. Generally I prefer to focus on my other runs and don't usually bother fitting it in. Plus I prefer Gamblers out of the 3 games on offer and if I decide to have a games run on top of my others then that's the one I normally choose.

I haven't run pairs since 2008 Nationals and haven't had a qualifying leg in just on 2 years - as you can see entering is pretty infrequent, plus my regular partner doesn't run Kennel Club trials any more, preferring the lower jump heights of NADAC instead. But when they scheduled a twilight trial soley devoted to pairs we decided to reunite and have some runs for a bit of fun.

Well we had tons of fun, plus someone must have stuck a rocket up the kelpie's butt when I wasn't looking. I don't remember him being this fast in a very long time so of course I was delighted. We Q'd on 2 out of 3 runs, won the ring on the 2nd run and had an even faster run on the 3rd, only to find the judge had DQ'd us for something he seems to have seen that we didn't - but we won't go there.

So now that we only need one more pass for SPDX we may be making a pairs comeback after all.

Plus it was really nice running in the evening, cool, not so crowded around the rings and lots of space up the back for the kelpies to have a run around off lead together between runs.

Here's Atilla with his partner Jack. This photo is around 4 years old now - it was actually taken the day before Atilla had his accident and broke his leg, a day I'll never forget - but it's the only photo I can find with them both together.

Did Warrnambool earlier in the month but my runs weren't all that memorable. The weather was disgusting - wet, hot and extremely humid. Plus the grass had just been mowed and not raked up and the rings were stinky to high heaven with wet grass aroma.

Cruz got the last pass he needed for JDX with a first place - he really wasn't all that into it given the conditions and although it was a nice clean run it wasn't at his usual pace. We were first in the ring and I remember thinking that the time we put down would certainly be beaten. The strange thing was that every dog in the ring seemed to be affected by the conditions and on a go slow, so at 11 seconds under SCT we were actually the fastest- on a course that would usually see close to 20 seconds under as the norm from some of the fastest dogs.

So my baby is now in Masters Jumping with his big brother - he is so not ready and won't be making an appearance for some time while we 'embrace our holes' in preparation.

Atilla didn't run anywhere near his usual pace - we ran a very technical Masters Jumping course that had threadles, wrap arounds, serps - you name it-we managed to go around clear but were .2 second over time. Every other run had just one little thing each time, although I was really disappointed with his speed on most runs. I think I have the only working dog that goes on strike if the temperature rises over 25 degrees - bring on Winter trialling. Or better yet, more twilight trials.

Did I mention how much kelpies heart twilight trials? Bring 'em on !