Where do I even begin?
We ended up leaving earlier than I had intended because my friends were peer pressuring me to get in some practice tracking and training. We left Tuesday in the late afternoon. We got down to California around 3:45am. We had a hotel room reserved but they cancelled our reservation which left us calling around to find a room. Long story short we found another hotel and ended up booking the whole stay with them instead.
I had to get up around 9 Wednesday to make it to tracking, so I only had roughly 5 hours of sleep. Another long story short - I drove an hour to tracking practice only to arrive and find out the field was covered in fertilizer. I couldn't afford to have a bad tracking experience so I followed my friends out to a field that was 2 hours away. The tracking went okay. The alfalfa was super tall and the field was dry. Stuck found 2 of 3 articles and managed the track okay. She did miss her corners so I was mildly worried she would bomb them in tracking at the trial.
Thursday I needed to be at stadium practice at 9:00am. Someone I train with booked the time after me (we only got 5 minutes to practice!) so we had 10 minutes total. Practice sucked. Stuck didn't want to go over the jump, she ran into the wall, and I wasn't convinced she would do her send out. Protection went pretty terrible too, we spent our 5 minutes running the blinds.
So you can imagine by now I am REALLY tired, Thursday night after practice wrapped up we had to go to draw night. It's where you find out the order you'll get to go in for stadium and you turn in your score book. I didn't get out of there until 9:30 and had a 30 minute drive to the hotel. To top is off I drew #2 in our "flight". Which meant I would be second up on the field. (My anxiety went up ALLLLL the way!) I'll tell you what, I was soooo tired and so cranky. I called my dad on the drive home and was just really down on myself and my dog. I felt like we should have never entered the trial. We didn't belong there. I felt like I have been training super hard for weeks and we are going to walk on the field and it will look like my dog isn't trained at all. I was even questioning whether I wanted to continue IPO with Stuck. At the OB practice it seemed like she didn't even really want to be there with me. I was so stressed out about everything and needed to be at the stadium by 6:30a so I could prep my dog. Everything really just sucked that day.
Friday morning rolls around, I am second on the field so my dog did her long down first. She did the down like a boss. No surprise there. We go out onto the field and wonder of wonders, she's heeling with me! She totally got her crap together and was a willing teammate. I haven't seen the video yet, I know it wasn't beautiful but - she retrieved over the jump, she got all of her out of motion positions, and holy heck, she did her send out! I was so pleased. Then we had protection, I couldn't believe my eyes she ran ALL OF HER BLINDS! She didn't even think about running immediately into 6. Her routine was good but she blew her back transport... as in she walked 4ft ahead of me. I was like "Who are you?!" but there wasn't much I could do about it.
Sunday was tracking. Of course when we went to draw I drew #1. Of course. I can't complain too much though, it was nice to get tracking out of the way. We had to walk a million miles through an alfalfa field... I don't know the real distance but it was a hike. We checked in and I told Stuck to track and... SHE TRACKED! She was slow, she took her time, she nailed the first corner, found her first article, her second corner was more messy but she found it, and then she found her last article. What a relief that last indication was.
Stuck earned her IPO2 at the 2018 AWDF National Championships with scores of 84/78/77. Who knew that our worst phase would be our best score. The numbers are not amazing, we didn't get a place on the podium or a trophy, but my dog passed at a HARD trial. The judges had super sharp pencils.
So many emotions were felt this weekend for me. I am so proud of us, I am so proud of my dog. She really came through for me when I didn't think she would. In every phase. Our hard work really paid off in the end. I can't believe I put an IPO2 on my dog, when I got into the sport to just have an IPO1 was my goal. I never thought we would try a championship - although this is first and maybe last. I am 100% okay with trialing at and hopefully being successful at just club level. I am so glad that I went to this trial. I feel like it has boosted my confidence greatly, I am sure I will still have trial nerves, but after this experience I can handle the rest. I survived a really big trial, I didn't forget my routine, I didn't make a big mistake. Not only that, but I succeeded in titling my dog. This experience has just been invaluable, traveling, trialing somewhere new. Sharing a trial field with some really big IPO names. We survived and we came out on the other side. Now to start prepping for that IPO3!
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