Katie and I survived and she’s pretty full of herself too.  Cause she has a pretty red ribbon to add to her collection.  She thinks she looks particularly good with red.   But of course it’s a much longer story than that.

We arrived early, way too early, again.  Lesson learned.  We were there for 3 hours before it was actually time for me to walk the Advanced course.  By then Katie was pretty much over it, but she waited patiently in her crate for me to go through the course.  There were only two of us in Advanced A; a woman named Kim and her sheltie Mona.   Mona is just the sweetest girl I’ve met in a long time!   Kim and I did the walk through together.  Good thing too, because I fixed something she had a misconception on and she pointed out we had missed station #4 totally the first walk through!

I’ve been working on memorizing the signs and perfecting my footwork all week.  I practiced pivots on my lunch walk yesterday.  I called ‘”come!” and “down!” and “heel!” on my commutes.   I worried about her popping up from downs, following me too fast when she was supposed to stay.  I worried about forgetting to ask her to sit when I should, or asking her to sit when I shouldn’t.  I worried.

What I didn’t worry about…ever…was her jump.  She loves to jump.  She’ll jump anything…and then she will often turn around and jump it again.  So the fact there was a jump at station 2 was not alarming.  Until she walked around it and then looked at me like ….”What?  You wanted something else?”  So there goes 10 points right off the bat.

I sighed and shook my head and we finished the rest of the course.  Other than a couple of crooked sits she was perfect.  The things I had worried about were beautiful.   She’s something else, she is.

Then we were out of the ring and I told her she was a good girl, which she was.  I think I just wasn’t going fast enough to get her running, and she didn’t realize she was supposed to leave my left leg and go jump.  We watched the other woman in our class do the course and they did great too.

Afterward Kim was excited for me because the score they put up for me was 99.  Her score was 95.  But I knew that wasn’t right, with no jump the best we could get was 90.  So I talked to the steward and at a break we talked to the judge who was grateful that I told her.  I was glad too.

So we ended up in 2nd place of two…but I’m proud of Katie and her score..the judge gave us 90 and I’ll take it!

Katie says it was a long day for a little ribbon…but she’s willing to do it again, and if I give her enough warning she’ll even do the jump!

Maybe.