We finished our trip in Waynesville NC for the Highflyer Agility UKI Classic put together by Brian Ferrand . We spent four days with zero cell phone connection which was VERY odd in this day an age, and made it quite interesting since I was entirely dependent on the Agility Gate App! Still, it did provide some relaxing sleep and time away from Facebook which is always a plus in my book 
This was one of the biggest trials I have been to since Covid started, I think the Perry Regional was bigger, but I don’t think anyone expected the numbers for this trial, including me. I ended up wearing lots of different hats, and feel like I should thank all the people who stepped up to answer my call in any way. It certainly took a village and whether you only carried a few leashes or built every single course, any little bit is appreciated and I hope you know I was grateful THANK YOU!!!!
Now to the highlights…..I expected going in, that this would be a more challenging trial than the norm, and Judge Shane Miller ‘s courses were certainly challenging and tested our skills. I was excited to see if we could try out some of the things we have learned in the past year and there were plenty of places to do that and some. My dogs were AMAZING and gave me all they had, even though I probably should have been better focused on them, and I think we only had one clean run all weekend. I really have no clue what our results were like on paper as I never made it to the posted scores, but we seemed to have a lot of nice runs with just one or two bobbles which I truly consider a success and makes me very proud of my two!!!! Not easy to come with relatively green dogs to an event of this kind and run them on these types of courses! Still, I tried LOTS of things I had never tried before and pushed some of our training to the limit….apparently I can lead out clear across the ring and layer a contact and have my dogs be confident and committed, yey! When you only train in a 70 x 70 space, your distance skills can be limited 
I have been working hard to build Rebel’s confidence, and have her offer a consistent and focused setup at the Startline and she was great in every run! Her Consolation Speedstakes was just PERFECT, and her Pentathlon Gamblers run may have been good enough for a win in a very competitive class. She could have used warm-up runs, but since she already has both BYEs for the Open, I only entered her in Pentathlon so she was a bit wild right off the bat. Kyber showed the world he can listen while running at warp speed and though our weaknesses were clear, and I felt we weren’t well prepared for some of the tight jumping required, I kept reminding myself that he only just turned three, and that he is certainly doing better than I ever dreamed we could! He had so much amazing stuff (literally did things I didn’t know we could) and his fan club certainly keeps growing Our homework list keeps growing as well, and TURNS are definitely still on it with both dogs, but overall, I am absolutely impressed by what they did! We dont really have any plans currently until Cynosport and the US Open, so we certainly have time to assess and train! I walked over 90 thousand steps over the weekend, and lost track of how many courses I built, but somehow I managed to bring Sci-Fi out and have some fun with him around the site, and he did awesome as well.
All in all, a great few days spent with Dennis and the dogs, testing our training, and in the company of friends. And isn’t that what agility is all about!?!?!?!?
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