Thank You AMY!!!

This post is not really about thank you Amy, but, without Amy there would be no post!! I managed to find a way to completely screw up my passwords, usernames, you name it and was unable to even get into my own Blog! Thank you Amy for at least getting me back into my Blog!!!
On to the other topic, I am on a serious high from 2 days of amazing runs at our local USDAA trial!!!!
There was one downside that I need to talk about first however, although Wally was only entered in literally 1 class yesterday, (Steeplechase, in which he Q'd and won round 1 :-), and 3 classes today, he came up lame again! His iliopsoas refuses to just heal and not be an issue, so although he is still running at winning times, (took second in Masters standard today and was but a mere 2/10ths behind daughter SoBe in Steeplechase finals), it appears that he is going o be back on rest for a while, and after that pretty much a tournament only dog. This makes me very sad as Wally is, well, Wally... Mama's boy extrordinaire, the Golden Child, my main man, you get the picture... I will do whatever is best for Wally!
On to better stuff, SoBe and Maze were off the charts this weekend! OK, all 3 were but as I already pointed out Mr. Wallys awesomeness was cut short by his ouchiness!
SoBe and I seriously ran together as a TEAM! We had a bit of a rocky start yesterday in our first class of the day, team jumpers, she and I maneuvered our way through what I thought to be the hardest parts of the course only to be foiled by a tunnel off course that I did not really forsee as an issue! I did determine that it was my issue as I was definitely showing too many forward cues when I should have been peeling off laterally.
Next up was team gamblers, let's just say my superior weekend with the Sobester started after that :-) SoBe and I made our way through a VERY difficult team standard class that was eating people alive, definitely made my day. This run was directly after a smoking round 1 Steeplechase Q!
Today started out fabulous as SoBe won team Snooker, placed second in Master standard, was clean in team Relay, tied for second in GP for her second qualifier needed for Nationals, and won Steeplechase round 2 even beating her daddy and coming in 2.5 seconds ahead of the next clean dog, I could not be more proud or more excited about the future for my little SoBe DoBe Doodle Bug!
Maze was equally awesome ending the 2 days with a 100% Qualifying rate, several wins and one of the 3 dogs on the winning DAM team! Thank you Jen, Kris, Morganne, and, Liz for all of the filming! When I get videos I will throw a few of them on my YouTube page.
We have a very small 26" population in Colorado and I am so happy to say that with the addition of Mary and Trek, a highly competitive 26" team I have been forced to really run Maze the way he should be run instead of just playing it safe around the course and he is responding beautifully! Thank you Mary for being such a great competitor, trainer, handler, and new found friend!
There is another day of trial tomorrow but I did not enter, so I will be enjoying a day at home hanging pictures on my newly painted walls, going for a long hike and training Danger and Vintage. The "old" dogs get the day off, it is Sunday after all, a day of rest :-)
I will get back to training talk but just needed to "share" my fun weekend, it really was great!
I did have really good intentions of coming home tonight and training the puppies, but, after 2 days of trialing that started each morning getting up at 4:00 to make the 2 hour drive to the show site, (I am more willing to drive than spend anymore nights in hotels), I was exhausted and decided that a tired trainer is not a good trainer and will pick up where we left off tomorrow!
What does tomorrow bring, simple jump sequences for Danger, dog walk practice of course, and, probably a tire or 2 thrown in for good measure.
Vintage gets to continue to learn impulse control, tons of toy work, a few trips through the jump uprights, and some "mat work" just to name a few things.
As an aside, I have to throw in a note about the power of positive thinking and how incredibly important it is to focus on your Mental Game as part of your training and trialing regimen, the Mental game is a huge part of everyone's ultimate success in any endeavor, one of the many things Lanny Bassham speaks of is to remember that you shouldn't focus on the outcome of the run, you should focus on the run itself, doing so will take care of the outcome!
Happy daylight savings, looks like Spring has Sprung!