Entered!

Today I sent off three important pieces of mail:  a CPE membership form and two trial entries.

January 15 and 16 will be our first trial.  It's a CPE trial at All Dogs Gym, where we're going for classes.  We entered level 1, which has no teeter or weave poles in standard.  They may be there in games, but only as an option.  On Saturday, we'll do Standard, Colors and Wildcard.  Sunday we will do Standard, Jackpot and Jumpers.  I thought about it a bunch and eventually decided to enter the Regular division, where he'll jump 20".  He had no problem with 20" the other day in class, and we were most likely doing much harder lines in class than we'll do at least in the Standard classes at competition.  I decided to go ahead with the Regular division because I don't think we'll want to go back and repeat level 1 at a higher height later, and 20" doesn't seem to bother him at all.

The second trial I entered is two weeks later, January 29 and 30.  It's another CPE trial, but this time at Riverside in Nashua.  That means I better make sure we get there before the end of January!  For that one, I entered Fullhouse, Snooker and Wildcard on Saturday and Jackpot, Fullhouse and Jumpers on Sunday.

I don't want to get ahead of myself, as our goals for these trials will really be to just have a fun time and get comfortable in the trial environment.  That said, it would be possible for Jonah to finish the Level 1 titles in these two weekends.  There are 4 title categories:  Standard, Handler, Strategy and Fun.  For the Standard title, you need 2 qualifying runs at level 1 standard.  That would mean we'd have to go 2/2 in the first trial, since the second doesn't offer standard.  The Handler category takes one qualifying leg in Colors and one in Wildcard.  We'll have one shot at Colors on the 15th and two tries at Wildcard.  It's possible that we could finish this category at the first trial, and we'd be able to move up to Level 2 Wildcard at the second trial.  For Strategy you need one Q for Snooker and one for Jackpot.  We'll get one attempt with Snooker and two for Jackpot.  Finally the Fun category is one Q in Fullhouse and one in Jumpers, and we'll get two tries at each of those.  If he somehow managed to do all of those, he'd be a "CL1," but let's not get too hasty :).

In other news, our teeter arrived yesterday!  Next week I'll get a board and put it together.

It also looks like we will most likely be getting a set of weave poles, 5 jumps and a pause table from Four Paws.  I thought the bidding would be a little more competitive, but I guess it's not :).  Good Christmas for Jonah this year!