Bandit Gets His Agility Title!

I'll go over the trial, but first, the beginning of our weekend.

Friday was pretty chill - my brothers came over and we went out and grabbed some dinner and then just hung out and watched TV at our place. Mostly we watched the "Planet Earth" series, which is too awesome. I love the bits they show at the end, where they talk about what they had to do to get the footage they got. Like the one guy who did a stake-out for I think, 8 weeks, to get film of the male birds of paradise doing his mating ritual (which is one of the coolest/funniest things I have ever seen).

Saturday morning I took Bandit herding, although we took it easier than normal because of his feet. He seemed fine though, they didn't appear to bother him at all. At one point, Bandit and I had to move some sheep around to different pens (we usually will swap out groups of sheep either to get in fresh ones, or to get easier sheep for the more novice dogs). We had to move some of the mamas and four of the 3-week old babies, and I was a bit nervous about it, because I've never used Bandit to move babies before, and I was worried about them getting trampled.

He ended up doing pretty well, although one of the babies was slow, and ended up being last coming out of the gate, and Bandit was right on its rear. I was afraid he was going to bowl right over it, but he actually slowed down and stayed about a foot behind it. He even lay down when I told him to so that the sheep could go into the other pen without fuss, which NEVER happens. It was like he sensed the babies required a more delicate hand.

The next thing to do was to move a fresh group of working sheep to the first pen, and this is where things got a bit exciting. It's always tricky to get sheep in this pen, because of the way the barn is situated - it makes it hard for Bandit to get around them if they pass the gate, and he hasn't quite figured out yet how to fix the problem, so sometimes this task can take forever.

So as he was moving the sheep from the other pen, I decided to run ahead, and I ran straight for the gate so that the sheep and Bandit would follow me through it, instead of running by it. Despite the fact that I was hoofing it pretty good, the sheep caught up to me.

Now, here's the thing with sheep. They panic a bit. So when there's a bunch of them trying to run through a gate all at once, and there's something standing in the middle of the gate opening, sometimes they jump to try to get over it. Well, I happened to be right in the gate opening as I was running, and I had my back turned to the sheep. They started to run by me, when out of the corner of my eye, I could see something going airborne. I braced myself. The next thing I knew, I felt this heavy, soft thing land on my shoulders, and what looked like hooves on either side of my head.

The very next second, a sheep landed on its feet in front of me and ran off.

I have no idea how close I came to getting clocked in the head. It was probably too close for comfort. All I could guess is that this sheep somehow managed to straddle my neck and shoulders as it launched itself into the air. Crazy!

After that fun adventure, Marc and I ran some errands, and we later stopped by Steve and Erin's to drop off some things for baby Jennifer. Baby clothes are really fun to shop for, although I have no idea what I'm doing when I'm buying them (like if they're even useful or not), I just pick what's cute!

We finally watched Casino Royale that night, and that was pretty good. I can't quite get over the fact that Daniel Craig looks like he's perpetually pouting, but other than that, he was a pretty good Bond. He was sort of hot, and I'm not sure I ever thought Pierce Brosnan was.

So Sunday was the day of the agility trial! I had debated whether or not to even take Bandit because of his feet, but since he seemed fine herding and they didn't seem to be bothering him at all (the new pad skin was already pretty tough), I decided to go ahead and give it a try.

Typically, the Novice class goes last (after Open and Excellent), so we usually don't have to arrive until almost noon. Well, we got to the Dixon fairgrounds, and set up our chairs and everything, when Lorie (our agility instructer, who also runs a lot of these trials) came by to say hi. She said, "You know, you missed your Jumpers run." I was like, Huh? Turns out that this club changed up the order a bit, and the Novice class ran second for Jumpers! I hadn't even thought to check the schedule earlier, because Novice had ALWAYS run last before.

Luckily, Novice was still running last on the Standard course, so we hadn't missed that. Unfortunately, because we weren't going to be doing our Jumpers run, that meant that we had 3 hours to sit around and wait before we would be running. Being that it was Easter, none of the stores were open, so we couldn't even leave to go shopping and come back.

We ended up just eating some lunch and reading the newspaper there. I did get to see Lorie run one of her dogs in the Excellent class, and it was a riot. She had told me that her dog hadn't been running well all weekend, and unfortunately, the run I saw wasn't an exception. The hilarity of it was that everytime her dog messed up an obstacle, she'd raise her hands in the air and go, "YAY!!!" People in the crowd were cracking up, especially because her dog was all like, "woohoo!"

When it was finally my time to walk the course, I was so nervous. I don't know why I get this way, I just can't ever seem to calm myself down when it comes to competing. My legs literally felt like jello, it was so hard to walk around. When I went and got Bandit and was waiting in line, I actually had to kneel down because I was having trouble standing.

Finally, it was our turn, and by the time I walked into the ring, I think I pretty much stopped feeling nervous, because now it was all adrenaline. Bandit was all business. I brought him to the start, and he sat right down and stared at the jump ahead of him. He's not usually that focused in class.

He ran the course great. We had to restart our weave poles because he missed the entry (it was even harder because he had to weave on my right side, and usually the left side is easier), but he got it perfect the second time. He ran fast too. At one point I got in his path a bit and almost caused him to miss the teeter, but he managed to get on it in spite of my goof.

He hesitated just the slightest bit at the table, because he hates to go on there (the dog has to sit for a 5 count, and they don't like to have to stop running). I did get him on there without a fault, and he just barked at me the whole time, anxious to get going again. He managed to hold his sit though, and that's all that counts. He seemed like he was having a blast the entire time.

I was so stoked when we finished and I was pretty sure we had qualified. Marc came over to congratulate us (he didn't videotape, so sadly we have no video of the run!), and I went and gave Bandit a bunch of treats.

He got First Place! And he beat the Second Place dog (an Aussie) by nearly 6 seconds. So we got three ribbons - one for qualifying, a blue rosette for First Place, and one for his new title! Bandit also got a stuffed toy to take home.

So in the end, the long day was worth it. Now we have to work on getting his final Q for his Jumpers title. Moving up to Open Standard is going to be challenging, because your weave poles have to be perfect there, and ours aren't yet.

One cool thing I learned was that you can search all past event results on the AKC website. I looked at some of our past trials, and was able to see Bandit's results and times online, which was pretty cool. The only funny thing was that so many of the other dogs have these fancy long names, and his is just "Bandit." I actually thought about giving him the registered name of "PH Stole My Heart" (PH being his breeder), which I thought was a cute way of saying "Bandit." Marc wanted nothing to do with that though, heh. But, a lot of Border Collies actually often eschew the fancy names, and trend more towards the simple, so maybe it worked out fine.

The rest of our day was spent doing chores, fish tank stuff, and grocery shopping. We didn't even have time for a nap! One funny thing that happened - I let Mo out for a little bit, and it turns out that not only does he know how to open the door to let himself out of his room (I've blocked the door with a 30 pound box of cat litter, which he has somehow managed to move a couple of times), but he also knows how to open the door to the guest bathroom where he seems to know that I keep his food.

I caught him in the act that night, and decided to pull out the camcorder to see if I could catch it on tape. I closed the door again, and just watched him for a while. Sure enough, a few minutes later, he went up to the door, jumped up, grabbed the handle with his paws, and hung on to it until it opened! I couldn't upload the video yesterday because of my dead computer, so it'll have to wait until I get that back up and running. It was too funny though. He also managed to go in there and open the container that holds his food. This is one smart cat!

Hope everyone had a good weekend!