Tamsu Trial...Weave Pole Woes

Blaze and I were at the Tamsu agility trial today, with high hopes of having another amazing day of agility trialling. Well, when things go wrong, they go very, very wrong. It is amazing how much my mood can affect my ability to focus. I am unfortunately extremely sleep deprived due to working long hours coupled with a long commute. And, I had an extremely horrible day at work yesterday, which put me in quite a foul mood. I tried my best this morning to re-focus, and to be the clear-headed handler my dog needs me to be, but I could not pull it together. Our first three runs went from bad to worse, with Blaze not responding to my cues. There was a feeling of complete lack of chemistry, although some of my agility friends could not tell from the sidelines, as Blaze appeared to be working nicely except for the weave issues. A comment at the end of the day from our current coach made it clear to me that she could tell I was off... very observant... Blaze got his first weave entry today, and then refused all the rest. I did manage to get him into the weaves in our very last run of the day, but I had to micro-manage the entry. This is not how I like to run a course. On one of our breaks, I got out some treats, went to the practice jump, and did some drills similar to what we have been doing in class, with lots of reward. I did some flatwork as well, hoping that Blaze and I could "regroup", and once again capture the chemistry we have been able to achieve recently. In our jumpers run, we did great. We were on, working great again together, it appeared I was able to refocus, and get myself back on track. There are no weaves in jumpers, so I'm sure this was a factor. This was our only Q for the day. Next came our gamble... we had a brilliant opening, but did not get the gamble, as there were weaves in the closing sequence, and Blaze refused the entry. I was happy though that we seemed to be back on track. Finally, came our team run. It wasn't my best work, but it was clean. We were 1.4 seconds over time. We lost at least 3 seconds at the exchange due to some poor communication.

This is a huge confidence buster for me, and regionals are only two weeks away. I somehow need to find some balance in my life. Having a challenging job just doesn't seem worth it if it interferes significantly with my training goals.