We did all four runs and that's something that is somewhat new for us. When I first started going to trials I was afraid that Dahlia wouldn't have it in her to go back out so many times. So we did two or three runs in a day. That meant there was a lot of sitting around. There still has. Those four runs take all of about four minutes (plus warm up time), but we're at least not waiting for three hours to do our next run. As I'm finding out, Dahlia has no trouble doing four runs in a day. She has time to rest and relax in between things. So I figured why not?
We had a fairly successful day. We started off a bit slow, probably due to the stress of the trial atmosphere (it was very crowded indoors!) and ended up NQ'ing in Jackpot despite completing the gamble (we were over time). The second run was Wildcard and while it was slow, we completed it under SCT (standard course time) and Q'ed. This was the one and only video I have of us over the weekend.
It's also the first time anyone has gotten a video of one of our qualifying runs!
We had another unsuccessful run with Jumpers. Dahlia was actually looking really good until she had an itch. We ultimately ended up going around one jump (the one she stopped to scratch in front of) and went far over course time as I sat there and was unable to stop her from scratching. Such is life! At least she was amusing.
The final run of the day was Snooker. Ah, the dreaded Snooker. As it turns out I really like the strategy of the game and I think it might be my favourite. Shhh...don't tell anyone!
We tried Snooker twice at our last trial and were almost successful (one time we were too slow; the second time we got whistled off the course after the opening). I didn't have high hopes for this one because Snooker is really difficult and one part required making sure she didn't go back into the tunnel she just came out of.
Imagine my surprise when she was super excited to get out there, tugging and leaping for treats. I set her up and she couldn't wait to go. She came off the line well and completed the opening with no problem. We got to the closing sequence (labeled 2 through 7) and got ourselves through to 5 before the whistle blew and the game was over.
We ended up with 21 points for the opening and 14 points for the closing, netting us a total of 35. As we only needed 24, we Q'ed.
That gave Dahlia her fourth mini-title: CTL1-S (Level 1 Enthusiast Strategy title). The four titles she got meant that she was awarded her full Level 1 title. It was a very exciting moment and even the judge came out and hugged us.
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| Dahlia shows off her title ribbons |
