This afternoon I’m on the road to the Splash & Dash USDAA trial in Pittsburgh. This is very exciting because this begins my girl Hazards competition career. Everything before now has been training and practice. I’ve been thinking all morning about my first ever USDAA trial… and at how excited and nearly terrified I was. That was in March of 1990 in Phoenix Arizona. The judge was Sallye Tatsch.

Hazard is truly my third generation of agility dog. I’m very relaxed about our prospects on the weekend. She’s a good girl and is growing in confidence in her agility work.

We got a brief workout this morning. Mostly it was about the weave poles. She’s making her entries and moving pretty quick. But I’m mindful that these are her weave poles. Of all the agility obstacles this is probably the hardest to generalize.

We also spent a wee bit of time working on the table. I’m mostly interested in a prompt drop to the down position… which is the only position in the USDAA.

In a final bit of hot-dogging I worked on these modest distance challenges. Well, it’s the same sequence but can be taken in either direction.

The dead-away send is one of the most challenging of all distance exercises because by definition the handler isn’t much supporting the dog with his own movement.

Distance work is largely a proposition of giving the dog permission to work away. Lord knows Hazard and all my dogs have a permission pass to go out and do what they want to do. The line that I drew on the course actually represents how much forward pressure I had to give Hazard from either side. I expect with Bogie I could have been another 15’ back.

The key to the send really has to be making a timely announcement of the mission ahead. For example as the dog’s about half-way down the dogwalk plank I’m already telling her with a bit of an imperative in my voice to “Go On! Jump!”

In Pittsburgh

Okay I’m into the Red Roof in Monroeville with a couple hours of daylight left. I’ve decided to take Bogie and Birdie with me even though they don’t get to show on the weekend. I hate leaving my boys behind. They’ve been my buddies and competition partners for like a dozen years now.

The Red Roof doesn’t have free WiFi access. So I figure I won’t try to log on tonight and I’ll fuss around with dial-up tomorrow. They do have T‑Mobile one of those rent-a-few hours things that charges about 10 times what the connection is worth. The guy at the front desk says that Red Roof is working on their own free WiFi system. So we can expect that change in the next few years.