You have been disconnected... beep beep beep

Picture courtesy of Sharleen Olsen

Okay, so we ran the second trial this past weekend, I cannot say too much, as some provinces have not run the trial yet and will only be able to upload the videos in a couple of weeks, but for now I will say this:

I have been going on and on about how well me and Chaos has been doing, but then, on Sunday, we had one of those terrible moments, where we just disconnected.  He decided that the left hand tunnel entry was definitely right, despite my verbals and obvious body language that it was in fact not...  I don't blame my dogs for mistakes, yes it is mostly me.  But in moments like these, where my dog is not intending to do the wrong thing, but just feels that he is right, I actually want to cry.  For some or other reason, we just completely disconnected, I have been looking for the reason, but I cannot find it.  I guess that is just life.  The rest of the course he did perfectly, what a round it would have been... Arg, hate 'would have beens'.  This was in the contact round, which was actually a decent course.

On the non-contact course I will comment at a later stage, but lets just say that from both a handler and judges point of view, I really do not agree with this course.  Anyhow,  we got around the course miraculously, as disconnected he had been in that one moment an hour before, he had gotten the line back... the signal was full again (maybe my and Chaos's reception tower had just been down with technical problems earlier).  As terribly as I had to handle, as much as the course was not my cup of tea, we got around...  not in a good time mind you, but at least I have some points on the board.  It is not like I played it safe, but the course just didn't allow for decent handling.  Two more trials left and my resolve is the same.  I will attack every course, I am NOT playing it safe, because in competitive agility 'playing safe' gets you nowhere.  Chaos has the skills, we are doing the training.  I want to go to France this year, if I make it I make it, if not, well then we will just have to work at it again next year.