Doghouse Arts Pictures

While we were at the AKC trial, Doghouse Arts was there taking photos - I bought a couple really cool pictures of Skye.

MHGRC AKC show at DougCo

We did the AKC show this weekend in Castle Rock. We ended up with 4/6 runs Q'd. I didn't get to write down my stats for Saturday, so I don't recall placements, but I had a nice FAST run with a Q and 72 points. We just missed the 5pt jump at the buzzer and had to subtract 2 seconds for over time. We also had a nice Open Standard run on Saturday and earned our 2nd leg toward the OA title. The Excellent A JWW run was going great but we managed an offcourse jump, so NQ there.

Sunday we again had a great novice FAST run, and I did manage to get all 80 points under time. That was good for a 2nd place Q behind the super speeedy Excellent B border collie Ayr. We then ran our Excellent A JWW course, which was a fun handling twisty course. Other than a blown start-line stay, which made the opening a bit of a scramble, the run was nice and ended with a Q and 3rd place. I need one more Exc. A JWW qualifier to move up to "B" with the huge pack of 20" dogs. Finally I was onto running my Open Standard course. I was hoping for a Q here so I could get my title and move onto Excellent in standard. It was a nice run but we got called for an AFrame contact, as I didn't give Skye a good line and was probably in his way. Our time would have been good for a 1st place if we were clean. Bummer!!

I am SO pleased that we nailed 6/6 weave pole entries!! There were a couple tough ones too.

This weekend leaves us 1 Q short of all our titles - Open Std, Nov. FAST and Exc A JWW, so I am looking forward to the next AKC show and the possibility of getting a few of those titles!

We also spent a ton of $$ on some really cool pictures of Baby and Skye from Doghouse Arts.


PS: I got two letters from AKC saying that my prior two Q's for Novice FAST that we did a couple weeks ago are null & void, as they were run in Novice A class, when I had other AKC titles. I was pissed because I had asked to be moved up from A to B, 3 weeks before the show, and was told they don't move you from A to B. As it turns out, they wont move you day-of-show from A to B, but they should have moved me since the closing date hadnt arrived.

Meet Kaylen

This is Kaylen. She is probably 3 or 4 years old. She came to us from Rocky Mountain Border Collie Rescue quite some time ago. As far as BC's go, she is on the small side, though I haven't measured her height yet to know what her jump height will be.

For a long time, we have worked on building her confidence. She used to just hide behind chairs and such rather than socializing. She is really afraid of thunder and will shut down when she hears it, though she has improved considerably. I am on her 3rd attempt at teaching her agility - the previous attempts were unsuccessful due to her fear issues. This time around she is doing great, and hasn't shut down in class.

She has a different personality too that only comes out when she is wound up. We call this "crazy pup" where she will attack your feet, grab toys and generally be a crazy pup. She has jumped up and ripped a sweatshirt and t-shirt recently when she was having a crazy pup moment. If we could get THAT dog in agility, she'd be amazing. She is quite fast and likes to run circles around the other dogs while they play to fetch tennis balls or frisbees.

USDAA at Loveland

We did a USDAA trial up in Loveland on the weekend of April 5/6

It was our 2nd ever USDAA trial and Skye and I had a great weekend, with 7 of 8 runs Q'd. We earned our PD1 title (performance dog 1) which means I move up to the PD2 level (think "Open") for the next USDAA trial. We missed having a perfect weekend because I didn't hold Skye's A frame contact on the Steeplechase run.

One funny moment was during our Snooker run. The tunnel was the 7pt obstacle, so I was trying to get 3 of those before the closing, and I mishandled it and found myself on the wrong side of the tunnel. The tunnel was stretched out straight, so when Skye came out the other end, I was trying to get over to the other side of it and called Skye to me - so he jumped OVER the tunnel and came to me... I was a little shocked and expected to hear the judge's whistle but it seems that is legal... so we kept going. I finished the Snooker run and duh.... didnt bother to cross the finish line to stop the clock so that cost me an extra 5 seconds, putting me in 3rd instead of 1st. Won't do that again!

A great success for us is that every weavepole entry was perfect. Some of you know that we've struggled with that and I've spent a lot of time working to fix it. We also had no trouble with the table which cost us 2 Q's the first time we tried USDAA.

Our ribbon cache was 2 Firsts, 2 Seconds and 2 Thirds