Videos!
Meg first, because she is perfect and I love her so much it hurts. This was her standard run Saturday. I went into the trial (as I always do these days) thinking "I'll let her decide, if she wants to be done she can be done". And as always, she made it very clear that retirement is not an option now. She had no start line because when you are Meg there are no rules. But I love how eager and happy she is. Note the frequent panicked "Meg! Meg!" shouts, as she was about 3x faster than I expected her to be. The microphone did not pick up my "Jesus Christ!" as she ran that line on the back end of the ring with the chute (which is an uphill run).
[YOUTUBE]Q5M3uvg9Wlc[/YOUTUBE]
Gusto's first run of the weekend. He was a bit stressed on the start line, so rather than make an issue, I didn't ask for his start line behavior. I think it wound up being the right answer, as he clearly shakes off the stress and runs. Look at those contacts! He hadn't been on contact equipment at all in about 8 weeks, since it was the last thing the vet wanted introduced after his injury, and practice was rained out that week. I'm also thrilled with his attempt to wrap the jump between a-frames. I really need to work on teaching him to run "tighter", as I haven't trained the skill at all yet. Obviously my opening was poorly timed since he is still slower than in practice while trialing (I thought we'd get most of the way across the dog walk coming back before the buzzer sounded), so he got a little lost on the long run to the gamble, but came right back and did his job. That is such hard thing for him and I'm so proud!
[YOUTUBE]0wz9IAVFFds[/YOUTUBE]
And his Jumpers run from Sunday. I stayed solely to see how he'd handle running in the rain, and he was super. Jumped right into his start line position and held it for the release, and handled me throwing a lot of late rear crosses at him (I'd walked the course with mostly fronts, but only walked twice because of the rain and got a bit lost!). A little nose-down, and one moment where he thought about leaving me, but again came back to keep working. I can't get over how hard he tried all weekend. It is so tempting for him to leave me and sniff in times of stress, and that point in the jumpers run was the most he did all weekend.
[YOUTUBE]RxZ4AUHDYeU[/YOUTUBE]
I'm still grinning because I'm so freaking lucky to have these dogs.