Wow. What an intense day! We started off the morning with a phone call for Jenny — she was offered her dream job! She has been interviewing since March 3, and it was so nice to get the call before we headed over to the Fairgrounds! One less thing on her mind so she could focus on Karma and the task at hand. Today was our warm up run for Nationals. This year, there were two options for warm-up — either ISC or Premier Standard. Premier Standard is a new class that the AKC Delegation is voting on later this year. If it gets approved, it will become a new agility titling class. It allows for threadles, back-sides, and some other advanced handling techniques that are typically only tested for at the International level. We decided to proceed with the Premier option. It was AWESOME!
The best part about the warm-up run may have been the expectations it set. You get all the jitters out AND you learn about how things work. For example, at a typical trial, you do the walk-through (learn the course) and then within 5-about 50 minutes, you do your run. Not so at Nationals. Here, you do the walk-through and then it may be HOURS before you actually get to run! Today, we had about a 2 hour wait. We were able to watch a ton of people run (which always makes you second guess your handling plan) and the anxiety kept building. When it was finally our turn to run, Jenny looked like she was going to throw up!
Luckily though, Marc’s family showed up in droves to support us, we had his Mom & Step-Dad, his Dad, his sister, and our niece. Add in all our Vizsla and Colorado friends who were there and we had a ton of love and positive energy surrounding us. Karma had an awesome run on a pretty tricky course and only had one mark against her for a side-exit on the teeter. This was just what we needed; a great confidence boost.
Bring on tomorrow — the main event!