Monday, August 26, 2013

SMART Runnings

So much news to report since the last post.  We'll start with the SMART trial over the weekend.  A huge shout out to my students who left their dogs at home and came out to volunteer at our trial.  Thank you, thank you.

Fin ran her heart out.  On Saturday, I signed her up for only 5 of the possible "EIGHT" classes she was eligible to run.  Eight is too many.



Snooker was a fun one.  With 5 possible reds, but only 3 could be taken it opened up an incredible amount of options.  My plan was to do three 6's in the opening until I watched snooker for a while and saw many people running my exact plan and going off course.  I saw many people doing other plans and going off course.  On the fly I decided to just go conservative and it paid off.  Doing a 6 and two 4's, Fin and I got through and did a fine job of getting through the end.

One of most favorite runs of the weekend was Master Challenge Jumpers.  A hard one that Fin and I did not perform successfully, but there was a bunch of good stuff that happened in this course as well.  I remember giggling and laughing and just simply enjoying the ride.



Still more work to do on contacts in general, I was really pleased with her weaves and happy with some successes with contacts.  We did get TWO standard Q's and both were first places giving Fin 10 more top 10 points.  It also gave us our Bronze Standard Championship in Performance (we have 15 standard Q's in performance). 

Despite the 10 second table, this was a pretty good run.



Sunday only had 4 possible courses and we Q'd in two:  Standard and Gamble.  In standard we had some contact problems, but got through sort of clean.  I think the judge was generous at the table and the shoot. 

All in all a lovely trial with good weather and excellent friends.