That's One Small Step for a Border Collie and One Wild Ride for Me !

Ivy's first ring experience has now come and gone and I have spent the last 2 days grinning like an idiot I'm sure.  To say that she surpassed my expectations on her first time out is definitely an understatement.

I honestly didn't know quite what to expect - even though I am very happy with how she is performing when training, getting out in the trial ring is a totally different ball game and anything can happen.  This was a bit of a 'fishing trip' for me - all I really wanted was to see how focussed she was before going into the ring, to test her startline under trial conditions and to actually run a full course without rewarding after every few obstacles as to date we hadn't done that at all. 

What did happen was that she ran clear on her very first Novice Jumping run, winning the ring to boot.  The judge set a Standard Course time of 35 seconds and Ivy mangaged to get around in just over 14 secs.  Her handler took a bit longer, LOL.

Ivy and her first place sash - although she would prefer to be in that tunnel rather than posing beside it.

So proud of my little girl right now.  Her second run I was also really happy with - she clipped the back bar of the spread on her lead out in the opening sequence so after that I sent her to the tunnel with a bit more distance so I could try out a 'run-like-hell-to-position' front cross and got an off course when she added an extra jump on her way ......... bad handler !  This course had a longer run home, the first one was a bit twisty-turny- and I was very pleased with her verbal 'go on' that we have done a lot of work with over the past few weeks.   Ivy's special galpal Sassy won the second run, so that was very exciting too !

I only entered this trial for the final afternoon but there were some very fast runs at Novice level and I believe that in the morning and on the previous day there were lots more.  There are quite a few experienced handlers with new dogs just starting out in Novice at the moment and the standard has certainly skyrocketed since I last run Cruz there.  From memory he won the ring every time with a reasonable paced clear, now a run like that would be lucky to finish in the top 5.

This can only be good for the standard of agility though, I believe for a long time we have been lagging behind a lot of the other states, but that appears to be changing (there are some awesome fast dogs in Masters right now) and with a whole new crew on the way up it can only get better.

So I am over the moon that we were able to hold our own against some really promising dogs, but boy are we going to have to work hard - still so many 'green dog' holes in our training that need filling in not to mention the handler ones as well.  But I look forward to lots more wild rides in the process.  Go Ivy !