My first field trial running the qualifying stakes went about how I expected it to go. Would I have liked it to go better? You bet. But hey it was a lot of fun and we came out with a ribbon. The first day we ran a land triple with a retired gun for the first series and this is where kirby and I dug ourselves a huge hole that we would have to be flawless to recover from. Kirby creeped about 6 feet out in front of me as the marks were going off and he only saw one bird thrown. He picked that bird up flawlessly then we had to struggle through picking up the other 2 birds. Good thing he runs fantastic blinds, I lined him up liked he would be running a blind and sent him on his way. He had a HUGE hunt on the flyer but finally prevailed and dug it out. The long middle bird he took a great line, made on loop and picked it up.

After that fiasco we snuck back in for the land blind. After running a great 3 whistle land blind we were back in it and called to the water blind. This was no cake walk of a blind but we did a great job on it and I was confident we would be back for the fourth and final series. I was pretty excited for this since kirby was the youngest dog in the trial and we were lasting longer than a lot of pros that have been running and training dogs for 20+ years.

The fourth series was a BIG water triple. After smacking the first two marks it was time to run the long retired gun that required a swim to the end of a lake. Kirby's initial line was looking good until the suction of a gun station pulled him off line and I had to handle. We ended up with a JAM (judges award of merit) in our first qualifying. I was pretty excited about this since we are new to the game and many of the dogs we were running against were 4 years old. Would I have liked to win it? You bet I would have. But I was content with green... Until next time. I WANT THAT FIRST PLACE BLUE.
 Pictures will follow when I get back to my computer.