Alright...I'm venting. We had a CARO rally trial this weekend, and my pup did beautifully. On Saturday a.m. he got HIT with 200/200 and completed his RN. In the afternoon, we were disqualified on his advance run because for the moving down I hesitated as he was going down (and I'm talking a hesitation - less than a second). I checked in the rule book, and it said for a short pause they would take off 1-2 points, long pause 3-5 points. I asked some of my fellow competitors if I should talk to the judge about it and they said to leave it, because it doesn't go over well when you challenge the judge. So this morning we have another trial - Starr does brilliantly again - he had to be resent on his jump (once), but that was his only fault....except that on the moving backwards/front 1, 2, 3, steps I miscounted on the third and did two steps instead of three. So we were disqualified again. It's SO frustrating to go from a score of 195 to 0 because of ONE STEP - especially when the whole point was for the dog to follow the handler and maintain a front position - which he did - to me the steps seem irrelevant. So now, because we live out in the middle of nowhere, he has to wait until next fall to get any legs, and we only ever have one judge come up which means that he can't get an advanced title until a year from now...sigh. I didn't mind DQing on one of the two, but to have DQ'd on them both for stupid reasons was beyond frustrating. I guess the good news is that now I'm going to be anal retentive about counting my steps , so it shouldn't happen again. 