FEO. FEO. FEO.

I'm beyond excited to say (so much excitement even after a big mix-up!) that Blade and I WILL be competing at the ITT World Team Tryouts which are just under two weeks away!

Although we are not vying for a spot on this years team we will be running FEO (or For Exhibition Only for anyone going "HUH?") and fingers crossed we will be giving the judges a performance (or whoever it is that selects team members) something to remember for 2014 Tryouts!

For those that are not in the know, here in Minnesota we still have snow. Lots of it. Which has made it a bit difficult (not impossible mind you) but difficult to train as much as I would like on actual equipment. With weather conditions being close to dangerous I haven't been able to get down to my ring rental nearly as much as I would have liked this past month. So, instead I have been focusing on Blade's overall conditioning and fitness. It's paid off :) his rear end is the strongest it has ever been and physically he is more than ready to handle a weekend running on carpet.

Today we finally got a break in the weather (sort of) and I pulled out some jumps and set up a mini-sequence that we COULD encounter in a few weeks. I actually saved all of the courses from last year's Tryouts and made some notations where some teams ran into trouble. Going into the next two weeks I just want to focus on "tuning-up" some things that we haven't worked on in a while. I have no intention of introducing any new skills to Blade as I doubt we'd execute it correctly at Tryouts.

The sequence I broke down today was an improvised version of Anne Riba's Round 1 Large Agility Standard course. I wasn't in the mood to set up the dogwalk with all of the sporadic rain showers we have been getting all day, so I chose to substitute it with two jumps instead. 

The full course for anyone interested:

Then the mini-sequence I focused on. Obstacles 7-11.

I ended up running both Blade and Viper on this particular mini-sequence and got some really good effort from both dogs. I even videotaped Blade's session! You can check that out as well:

I have plenty of mini-sequences from last year to brush up on with Blade leading up to Tryouts. The plan is to videotape and time every session and analyze our strengths and weakness just a bit more (you can never do that too much? Right?) to help prepare myself mentally for Tryouts. Blade? Well he'll just keep on being his usual brilliant self. I just have to focus on giving the weekend OUR very best effort.

Wish us luck!