A weekend FULL of Rally :)

We made it through our first show and competition experience! We competed in Rally Novice A both days at the Land O Lakes Dog Show. Here is how it went:
Saturday: Our first time competing in Rally! I was really nervous not knowing what to expect. Cooper did well but I was the one that made the mistakes. I had two re-dos because I rushed a bit too much. I ended up doing a redo on a call to forward finish left and a 360 left turn. On both of these I didn't give myself enough room to complete the task. Those redo's cost me 6 points. I had a couple of tight leash marks and a mark for not getting to a fast pace and then to a normal in time (but come on they hardly give enough room to do this with a giant breed dog) and Coop had a slow to respond on the Down and and out of position since he laid sideways. We ended up with a qualifying score of 83 and took 4th place. I was proud but wanted to try for a higher score on Sunday.
Sunday: I had high hopes for us today. Since I was more relaxed and Cooper did so well the day before, I thought that with out my mistakes we would get a higher score. WRONG! This judge was much more picky. But Cooper was also very distracted. Watching the video that a friend took of us, I think that it looks like I am almost dragging him through the course. He was so busy looking around at everything but me that he was all over the place. We had great difficulty with our left turns since he was not paying attention I had a hard time moving because I was knocking into him. After watching the video I can see points where he seemed a bit worried about the judge following us around the course, something that he didn't do the day before. I was really bummed! In the end we ended up with the same score 83 and 4th place again. We had a lot of marks for Cooper crowding me on the turns one tight leash and a bad hesitation on the Down.
We at least walked away with two qualifying scores. We are entering in another trail at the end of the month and hope to get our RN! I am hoping for a score in the 90's this time :)