You Can't Always Get What You Want

But if you try sometimes you get what you need. That's how the song goes and those are the best words to describe our first trial in A3/J3.

It was raining on the morning of the trial and the slippery road caused our car to slide out of a curve and we had a car crash. Luckily, nobody got hurt, as I was going very very slowly. Xsara didn't even notice it, she was safe in her crate. The only damage was on our car. We thought that there was no chance we could still make it to the trial, as we couldn't drive there any more. But luckily, agility people are probably the nicest people on Earth.

We called Dasa who was already putting up the tent beside the show-ring and she immediately suggested that she comes to pick us up. I also called my parents and they offered to take care of my car, so we left the car with my mom and went to the trial with Dasa. With a morning like this, I was so grateful that we were fine for the entire day, and I really wasn't nervous about running in A3/J3 any more.

We came to the trial just in time to catch the course viewing. The course was very tricky (tunnel under the A-frame and the A-frame was in the combination twice!). Quite a task for our leading contacts. But strangely, most of her contacts were done better than I anticipated, even though the judge gave us penalty points on the first A-frame. Otherwise our run was nice and we made it through the course with no faults on time. The second course was even more tricky and I'm not proud of myself, but I decided to play it safely. So on two tricky spots I lost quite some time, but got no faults. This time we got a couple of points on time because of my safe strategy, but otherwise I think we had a very nice run. Anyway, with two diecent runs WE PLACED 3rd! An amazing result considering that Slovenia has a very strong Medium team. I never expected we could place so high, so I was super proud. We may not be the fastest team around, but Xsara is a very reliable dog, and I respect her for that. However next time, I'm not going safe any more, I will just run and if I send her to a wrong obstacle, so be it. Here is the video of our Jumping run, thanks to Petrca:



Also another news - we started doing theraball exercises and she loves it. She jumped on the ball right away and on the first day she was already comfortable doing some easy tricks on the ball. That's another thing I love about her, the excitement she puts into everything she does. She is such a cool dog, so full of life and vital energy, and so loving and sweet at the same time. I just can't stop thinking how happy I am that she is fine, as she is sleeping in my lap. I'm taking her for an extra long walk when she wakes up - because today we celebrate life!