Inspired! (plus FCI video)

What an inspiration it was, watching the USA Large Dog Team win the FCI World Champion Team Jumping yesterday, in the Czech Republic.  WOW!!!

This is the course they ran:

And here is a video of the USA Team running.  It shows our large dogs in this order:
TCAM (Silvina Bruera), Solar (Daisy Peel), Icon (Channan Fosty) and Rev (Tori Self). 

Aren't they grand?



Only the top three scores were added for the final total, so Solar's refusal at the tunnel did not effect the outcome.  FIRST PLACE!  out of 32 countries.  AWESOME.  I must say there was some wicked-good competition, too.  USA won by hundredths of a second.  I'm totally impressed with the caliber of speed and handling prowess at FCI.  Those are some tricky courses. 

After watching the FCI runs, I was anxious to get to our agility class last night.  We didn't make it to our Tuesday class, so "crashed" the Thursday evening group.  We got to work on the Grand Prix Finals course from the Western Regionals.  Riff was splendid.  Although I had to make some corrections in my handling...(as always!)....he was very fun to run. 

So much so that I really looked forward to going to our practice time at the Leap Dog field this morning.  Riff was happy to be back, too! 

"Put your camera down!  Let's get going!"

We worked on a Mecklenberg one-jump collection exercise first.  He worked easily from 16" to 26".  Then we did a serp/threadle exercise, on a series of jumps that had been set up in a sort-of-circle, for just that purpose.  Our serps are looking good these days...and after making a couple of corrections with my position/timing on the threadle, Riff rocked those, too.  Yay! 

After a short break, we worked on adding some speed to his DW and A-frame.  That might've been a good exercise to do first (heh heh), but we got 'er done.  I ran as fast as I could. He did his best, and looked really happy!  We were pretty tired after all that.

 

Luckily we had a few minutes left, so we could take our usual walk/trot laps around the outside of the field, for our "cool-down," before getting back in the car to drive home.  We'll be heading out again, in a couple of hours.  This time we'll meet the ECS nosework group up in Windsor, for some training.

 

Ever onward!