"Wasn't easy. Wasn't supposed to be"

Wow, I didn't know how to start this post until I recently saw this quote attributed to Roger Bannister, the runner who broke the four minute mile, and I thought this fits so well in describing our quest for the UDX title. Heaven knows, it wasn't easy and I don't believe attaining that title is meant to be easy.

But, we did it! Jackson qualified in both Open B and Utility B yesterday at a trial in La Crosse, Wisconsin to get his 10th leg and that elusive UDX title.

ROBINDANES HEARTBREAKER UDX RAE TDIA aka "JACKSON"

Now, for the rest of the story ..... It was a small trial and the facilities were really nice. Lots of room to crate and warm up. The only downside - when we walked out of the motel Sunday morning the temperature was 14 degrees below zero! That's not the wind chill folks, that was the temperature. But, we're from the Midwest so we're tough and we adjusted : )

The first day of the trial was a good day, except he went down on the three-minute sit in open. The high point Saturday was his score in open would have been a 192 if he hadn't NQd on the sit. Not a good score for competitive dogs, but a great score for Jackson! His utility score that day was the usual 176. He lost a lot of points on lack of precision on fronts and finishes and on the no sits on go outs - things we have been working on in practice but he loses in the ring. 

The second day (Sunday) we had utility first at 8 a.m. His utility exercises went better than Saturday although he was somewhat stressed as usual. He only had one go out with a no sit. His score was a 181.5! Yay, we finally broke out of the 170s. One down and one to go : )

I was nervous about open because of his sit problem the previous day. But, he did the exercises fine, stayed up on the long sit,  and ended up with a score of 189.5. Again, higher than his average score for open.

Thus we ended the UDX quest on a high note all around last weekend. Now, to ponder ... what next?