I'm glad I did!
Over the course of the weekend Dahlia and I did 7 runs. We Q'ed in four of them. We figured out how to work together really well by the end of the weekend and came very close to getting our full level 1 title. But I bobbled and she saw a tunnel she wasn't supposed to take and despite my desperate attempts at calling her off of it, she went in anyway. GAME OVER.
But besides that bobble, we were very successful at running courses (instead of just trotting them). Some of that I have to thank a fellow competitor for. She had a dog much like Dahlia and said she never did start line stays with him. While I can do them (and do them well!) in class, at trials putting her in a sit means she loses all excitement and so comes off the start line incredibly slow. In our first couple runs (one Q, one not), I put her in a sit and it wasn't until she got to a tunnel that she picked up speed and started looking like the agility dog she's been becoming.
In the later runs when I just held her until the annoying mechanical thing said "GO" and then took off running, she was much faster right from the get-go.
In fact, we finally got that darned Full House Q that's been eluding us all along. We've just been too slow to get enough points. This time we got 2 points more than needed and finished under course time. The first buzzer didn't even go off! I was very proud of my girl for getting out there and working in the cold (first day) and rain (second day) and giving me her all the entire time.
We ended up with a new title, so Dahlia is now Dahlia CTL1-H, CTL1-R, CTL1-F (Enthusiast titles: Handler, Standard, and Fun).
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