I'm a terrible quitter

Bunker, Cally and I went to Sioux Falls, South Dakota this past weekend for an agility trial.  We were in one about two weeks ago that went really well.  Really, really well.  This weekend-not so much.

We had a total of fourteen runs and only qualified on three of them.  That's less than ideal.  Wayyy less than ideal in my world.   Now, don't get me wrong, both dogs ran well.  Really well.  Bunker's jumping was phenomenal and Cally was always a pistol.  There was just one thing that seemed to go wrong on each run.  At our level, if you're not perfect, you're not  going to qualify.  We're also at the level where we need not only one, but two perfect runs per day.  No pressure or anything.

Having such an imperfect weekend is discouraging.   You start trying to figure out whether it's worth it to keep trying. You look at the entry fees, the cost of travel, hotel and food and try to decide if it's worth it for only three q's (q is slang for qualifying score in the agility world)  out of fourteen runs.

Yesterday I decided I was going to quit doing agility. I was just so frustrated with the outcome of this trial. Good runs that weren't "good enough."  Someone said to me this weekend that those of us who do agility have a problem.  Our problem is that we just don't have enough sense to quit.   We just keep going, because we know that the next run might be the run of utter dog and handler perfection.  The run where every contact gets hit in the yellow, every bar stays up, every weave pole is done and every tunnel gets entered the correct way.  It's some kind of freaky addiction.  My decision to stop doing agility lasted a whopping three hours.  When I was on the road home, I knew I wouldn't quit.  I knew that today I'd be sending in entries for upcoming shows.

I also recognized some of the holes we had in our training.  Things we will work on so we can rock the next trial.  I'm a terrible quitter....