Good Bye A2! Hello A3!

Last weekend we arrived to the next milestone in our agility carrier. I had two trainings on very difficult courses with Erika the days before the competition and it felt so bad for me that I arrived to the Cup – well, not in a particularly good and confident mood, I can tell. Also I had a look at Erns’t parcour designs previously and they didn’t fill me with too much hope either. But, practice is practice I said, we need competition experience so no way back, we must go and run. (Especially because competing is always “easy” at home, where my parents can look after our little daughter while we run).

So we were there and thank’s to the great atmosphere made by my friends and team-mates I soon realised that my mood was getting back up to cheerful and I felt eased and free again. We took a walk with Jet who literally swimming in happiness every time when she is around her four-legged buddies at a competition crowd. She just loves this kind of busy and exciting atmosphere. This always makes me really confident and glad that at least I know she feels great and ready to have a good run. Looking at her being happy, smiley and eager to work makes me feel that it would be very unfair from me not to put my part 1000% to the game. So by the time our run came early afternoon we both were ready to make it great.

The last excitement was waiting for the courses that Ernst designed for us. I watched it being build and came to the conclusion that there’s nothing to be nervous about. Both courses were tricky with some trap so I needed to be really conscious and focused but I knew it was not impossible to run clean.

The first run was really cool, I loved the sequence between the wall and the see-saw, I managed to handle it the way I planned – and the way that was not the easiest I think.  Jet run really nicely with me. To the second run even that little nervousness disappeared that I had and we started nicely at a good speed. I think. In this second I made some very funny handling movement and also nearly slipped on the ground – no idea how it could be made in sand by the way – but finished clean again. I saw two other teams having really fast and beautiful runs but they made one mistake each so with this little luck on our side we managed to arrive to the first place again.

I am very happy with our performance, out of the two runs finally we had – lets say a half that I quite liked. Anyway I am always very critical with myself and hardly can tell about any of our previous runs that it was nicely handled. Jet of course was fantastic, she saved the runs at least at 3 or 4 points of the course buy not running off course of knocking the bar. I couldn’t blame her for  either of those 🙂

So we made it to A3 and of course I am very proud and happy because there is really a wonderful competition result list back of us:

  • Blue Danube Agility Trophy – Aug, 2013. 6 Clean run in 4 days, we made it to A2 and came 12th at the big final.
  • Hungarian National Championship, November 2013.: 3rd place overall (2nd place OJ, 7th place OA)
  • MEOE-ASB Winter Cup, January 2014: OA 1st place (A1+A2)
  • Kraft Winter Cup, January 2014: J2 1st place
  • Kraft Winter Cup, February 2014: A2+A2 1st places.
  • There were an other 2 competitions in 2013 Autumn where we got DIS but that’s all so far 🙂

Well, the hardest part is just about to come.  I am really excited to see how we can run now in A3 and then where we can proceed and improve our skills. The next steps will be the WC- EO qualis in March, where we immediately can test ourselves in a highly competitive event.  I don’t have really high expectations, it’s gonna have to be good fun most of all. We will try to run clean and (if we succeed) see how far we get with them.