Trials vs Practice

I was just thinking about the difference between practice, even fun matches & an actual trial.
I really thought Ditto was ready to trial & although she's done really well, I was reminded of all the things I didn't proof in practice... starting right beside the timer & scribe (friends of hers of course), the judge running the DW right beside you, that electronic "GO", dogs warming up very close to the startline with crazy tugging happening, and the extra noise & adrenalin etc. 
Ditto is not a dog that is worried by these things, but she is young & can still be easily distracted if we are not super connected.

She did well at the trial - first course was gamblers where she got 100 points!  She was running fast & confident...  2nd trial, 2nd gamber Q - we are so not ready for advanced!  In her jumpers run, she ran over to visit the pole setter so had 5 faults for a refusal, but the rest was great.

I only put her in 2 runs per day so the next day was steeplechase & Standard.   She broke her startline in steeplechase but I did take my eyes off her, so partially my fault, then she missed a jump, but I was very happy with the rest of the run - super contacts & weaves.  I'm not sure what happened in her standard run - started off great but she decided she wanted to do the backside of a jump (something to work on) then had a little zoomie around & through a tunnel, but she came back & did the rest just fine.
All in all, she's doing great for such a young dog!

On another note, I've been giving Blast valerian root for a couple of weeks since he is such a nervous nellie.  I was trying this mainly to settle him down at home but the upside was he had a great trial - 3 out of 5 Q's & running happier.  Not sure if this was just a fluke but will keep him on it to see if it really did make a difference!

Bizzie has been parked since Nationals since we weren't running as a team at all, but I put her in 2 runs - Wayne ran her in Steeplechase where she had an off course tunnel!  What a surprise!  She just needs Snooker runs for her ATCHC but haven't been entereing snooker - too much push & pull - anyways, we got a snooker Q!  Yeah!  Still not running well together but we got the job done.

Here is Ditto's gamble run!