December Rally Trials – Intermediate
Many Firsts
The short version is that we did MUCH better in our second set of trials. This was a two-day meet held in the building where we take many of our classes and attend practice drills, which was less distracting than the Expo Center’s horse arena with its alluring livestock aromas. We had worked a lot on getting him to pay more attention to me, and on me handling him more smoothly. It went better than I had dared imagine: we scored 100 of 100 in the first day’s trial, competing at the Intermediate level for the first time. There was a tie for first, and since our time was faster than that of the other team scoring 100, our score was marked as 100+ and we took home the blue first-place ribbon. The judge that weekend was generous with points in general, as you can see on the high-tech scoreboard. (Jeff took the photo then drew the red circles digitally.)
On the second day, our score was 99. There were two teams with scores of 100 (for 1st and 2nd) and three with 99 (3rd, 4th, and 5th). Again, our time was faster than the teams we tied with because Chama is long-legged and enthusiastic and if I don’t keep up with him, he’ll design his own course, so we ended up in third place, another happy surprise. I thought that Chama might behave well enough in the ring for the ribbon ceremony that day, the first time I felt brave enough to take him in with me, but he was a pill. He immediately grabbed the yellow ribbon from my hand and started shaking it around and chewing on it. As soon as I pried it out of his mouth, he stole the red ribbon from the 2nd place handler. Lesson learned: I will attend the ribbon presentations without him until he is less of a puppy.
Having qualified in these two trials by scoring over 70 points in each gives us two of the three legs needed to complete Chama’s Rally Intermediate title. I’m setting my sights on the next set of trials in March.
Video from our first Intermediate trial: