Morgan Hill SMART USDAA in March

Banksy back in her natural habitat after a long weekend of a trial. What a relief to go run around in the swamp!

There was a lot of mud this weekend, which made her happy. Luckily we ran in a giant covered arena since we have become a land of rain and rain and more rain. A lot of car sitting and patience, but a lot of really fun runs. Otterpop came with her, Gooey stayed home and slept in.

Some of the highlights were her Grand Prix and Biathlon wins. Actually my other favorite highlight had an off course tunnel, but it was one of my favorite runs. Steeplechase had a long, long line from jump to straight tunnel to jump to another tunnel but not the fun side the other side. Banksy had that look in her eye that no in-in-in would pull off and I had to restart and go. We had no time because of the E, but had we, it would have been FAST! Only 2 bars for the whole weekend!

She missed one dogwalk hit all weekend, my undoing as I was so far ahead I pulled her off early on a turn. The rest, no problem and there were a couple of hard exits. One amazing table, one table that I just left her there to work out for herself how to settle down and not topple off. 25 seconds worth of leaving her there for a standard run with 2 seconds of time faults! The rest of it was lovely, though, and I think it's good for her to have to hang out there and figure out how to settle herself into a nice down stay while I lead out as far as I can and she has to deal with. That's our only tough love these days with stays. Every run I start right now with a Whoopsiedoodle, I believe they're called, instead of leading out. We both like them and they work just fine.

She picked up a whole rack of Qs, not sure what to do with those but she gets them. She won other things too, I think some jumpers and perhaps a gamblers and a snooker. Our other favorite run was a gamblers opening that I designed just to make her happy with huge open loops and dog walks and frames and tunnels. That was her treat for being so good with the hard dog walk exit in the stupid table standard.

I didn't video. I should video. Some day I am going to wish I had video of these runs. Thanks Banks, for being such a good girl!