Post date: Nov 17, 2008 1:21:16 PM
This weekend we went to the NorCal Golden AKC trial in Santa Rosa. It was Trevor's 3rd AKC trial. It was also Touki's 3rd agility trial since returning to competition after a nearly 4-month hiatus. She has a bad toenail that broke and then got infected last summer. She has been pretty consistent since we started competing again, but 3 times this weekend we ran clean but didn't make time. The 4th time we Qed with 0 points. She already has 31 double Qs, so from a MACH perspective, Qs without points don't help us. Touki will be 7 in a few weeks, and she is more laid back than ever. Is it time to give up on MACH points (we have about 500 now), move to Preferred, and use her consistency to get our PAX ("Preferred" version of MACH--you need 20 QQs, but no speed points)? I don't know. I'll see how the rest of the winter trials go.
Trevor had a good weekend. On Saturday he finished his OAJ title. Starting from Novice, it only took him 7 runs to get all the way through Open jumpers.
Saturday:
Saturday's Open JWW course was harder than the Exc course, IMO. In the final stretch you made a 180 degree turn, put the dog over a triple, and came down a line of jumps with the dog on your left. At the end of the line, when the dog would think you had put him over the final jump, you had to turn him left into a tunnel, wrap him around, and then put him over the "last" jump again. Most people kept the dogs on their left and then rear-crossed the end jump to get the dog into the tunnel. But this caused a lot of dogs to spin out and get confused, which resulted in getting called for a refusal.
Trevor and I practiced our rear crosses on the practice jump before our run. I noticed that he is much stronger turning to the right than the left. I worried that this would make it hard for him to read my rear cross cue and make a smooth left turn into the tunnel. So I made the decision to put in a front cross before the triple that started the final sequence. It was insane, reckless, crazy! But it worked. I think he might have been the only Open dog to Q, and thus he got he OAJ title.
He had a nice Std run and got his first Open Std Q.
I went to look at Angela's RV, and when I got back, someone told me that the gate steward was calling for me and Trevor to run Open FAST. Oh no! We had missed our run-through, and I had no idea what the course was either. I almost scratched. But then I decided to do it anyway, and we Qed! The "send" was a jump-to-AF.
Sunday:
I was obsessively walking the Exc JWW course for Trevor (his first Exc run!) when I heard someone in the next ring, calling for the Open Std ring crew. Doh! I'm so used to running one dog (Touki) at one level--running 2 dogs at different levels is frying my brain. I ran over and tried to walk Open Std as fast as I could, before they kicked me off.
The Std course started with a chute into a tunnel under the AF. It had lots of tricky elements. I didn't have time for angst, and Trevor had a really nice clean, brisk run. Again, I think he might have been the only Open dog to Q.
Then we pretty quickly had to go over to the Exc JWW ring. Trevor was a little pokey at the beginning. Then after the weaves, I suddenly realized he wasn't with me! He was behind me, sniffing. Afterwards, Claudia told me that he was checking out a sun spot on the ground (SR is an indoor arena with a dirt surface). I got him back, and we finished the run. Clean! He was slightly over time due to the sniffing, but that is allowed in Exc A JWW. He took first place.
Then we hung around for a few hours for Open FAST. Kelly was with me--she had breakfast with her aunts Donna and Joanne, who live in the area. I volunteered to bar set for Exc Std. It dragged on forever. Then it was time to walk FAST, and Trevor was almost the first dog on the line. It was very hot. It was the same ring as Jumpers, which Trevor had been sniffy in before.
Tammy was the judge, and the course didn't have good flow, though the "send" seemed doable. But the best way to get to it was the AF, which didn't have a good approach. The last thing I wanted to do was give Trevor another bad contact experience on a FAST/Jackpot/Gamblers course. We're barely finished working through our last Gamblers teeter phobia. So I hastily decided to bring him up through a jump weave sequence.
From the start of the course, I could tell that he was fried. He wasn't into it. My chosen course had angles that were too tight. I kicked the wing of a jump and it flipped around. He got spooked and shut down. He was very slow in the weaves. He refused the triple. The buzzer sounded when he was in the "send." Disaster all around. Poor guy. When will I ever learn?? If you can't give your dog a good flow, don't do it. Just use it for practice. It's not worth it.