Jill and I will be at Smack-Dab's 2-day outdoor trial in Wheaton, Illinois. I'll be working the trial as well as competing. Jill's got one leg each in Nov Std and Nov JWW, and we're hoping to pick up more legs. But it's her very first *outdoor* trial, so I'm just hoping she doesn't decide it's a big sniff-fest instead of an agility run. :)

Anyone else trialing over Memorial Day weekend?

Ooh, good luck. I hope everything goes well and Jill keeps her focus. Do you train outdoors?

Good luck!! I'm from IL and I'll be coming home to do the AKC trial in Crystal Lake in July. It's my hometown and my family can't wait to be able to see what I've been up to :)

No agility for me this weekend. I have Darwin in a hunt test though, so keep your fingers crossed for a nice weekend!

Deb,
We had our first outdoor trial this past weekend. I was worried about sniffing also, but it wasn't an issue. I actually think she had much less to sniff outdoors than in those crazy horse barns.

I do wish I would have warmed her up a little bit more for wet grass jumping. She took down a bar at the beginning of her first run and I think I could have avoided that with some practice jumps on this unfamiliar surface.

It was also a bit of a distraction with spectator dogs sitting right near the edge of the ring with nothing more than a string of flags to separate them from us. Keep that in mind if you see folks watching near a place where you have to go. We had a tunnel exit that looked right into a crowd of about 3 labs and it was a struggle to keep Sinopah on task. The judge even asked them to move after our run.

Best of luck! I hope come home with 4 Qs and 2 more titles!

jh

Thanks for the advice, Jason. Since Exc and Open are run before Nov, I will have plenty of time to see what might distract Jill.

We have trained outdoors but only in our yard, which doesn't count because it's familiar. I wish I had time to train with another club that trains outdoors but I just can't swing it right now.

DarwinsMom, I saw that Crystal Lake trial; isn't that the indoors one? I *might* try to do day 2 of that trial. We'll probably be at a UKC trial on day 1, can't do both. :)