Peyton Rocks

I've had such a fun week with Peyton. We spent three days at camp with Karen and Ann and he was a *superstar*. I wasn't sure how he would handle three full working days, but he faired much better than I did! We worked through some really challenging sequences (lots of serps, threadles, and sends) and I couldn't have asked for a better performance. He's not really built for tight international style course work, but he really powered through and gave me some great turns *and* really nice speed. Good spotty! He really does try sooooo hard and I came away with a new appreciation for what *we* are capable of. Good times!

I made a late decision to enter him in a local USDAA trial on Saturday with the promise to myself that it was for practice only and I would not get upset over being called on any of the up-contacts. Stupid rule, but it is what it is. In any case we had some nice runs! He should have qualified in advanced gamblers, but the scribe missed 4 points in the opening, and we had a nice standard run, but he missed the up-contact on the dog walk. Oh well. I was a little flakey in Grand Prix, but he did have some really good moments there too.

On a good note, all of his a-frame contacts were pretty solid and he was 2/3 on the dogwalk. Zero teeter stops though. Oops. I'm on the fence as what to do with his a-frame - it's really hard for him to hold that contact at speed and I'm not wild about the impact. I think a quick release is much easier for him, but I'm not sure how long that will hold up before he's running. Running might be okay. Hmmm. Something (else) to think about.

Hooray for fun times with awesome spotty dogs!