Chaos Crew

Chaos Crew

Monday, May 11, 2009

Yes, Its ALWAYS something! Skye USDAA.

Skye and I had a much better USDAA weekend in Brighton. This was another outdoor trial on grass. We ended up 4 of 8 Q's and I was pretty happy with almost all of our runs.

Of course, lately it seems I cant buy a Standard Q.

On Saturday, we Q'd Performance Grand Prix with a 3rd place (finally a GP Q!!), and we Q'd Pairs with Lorrie & Maxx. Our pairs run may have been fast enough for 1st place but Maxx had 2 refusals so there was some time wasting plus 10 fault seconds added to our time.

On Sunday, we Q'd a tough Snooker course with a 3rd, just missing out on the 2 SQ's they gave out. To end the day, we had a nice Jumpers run and Q'd with 1st place!

Saturday's Standard course had a number of tough elements to it. There were some sharp angles that caused dropped bars, the really tough weave entry (that got Skye and I) , the AF/Tunnel discrimination (that got Skye and I) and quite a few side changes. Only 3 dogs out of 60 Q'd this course!

Sunday's Standard was much more doable, and we had it except that Skye again popped out of the weaves at pole 10. This time I took him back and made him do them again as it seems to be developing into a habit of his.

The good news- Skye again hit all his dogwalk contacts. The bad news- we got called for another AFrame contact.

So, what I am taking away from this trial is:
  • I realllly need to go back and retrain Skye's weave entries and having him stay in the poles.
  • Though he loves contacts, I still need to work these contact/tunnel discriminations when he is supposed to do the contact. No assumptions!
  • I must get back to some distance training. Our Gamblers skills have been lacking.
Always Something!

5 comments:

Sara said...

Congrats on your 4Q's and dogwalk contacts!

3/60 Q's on one course is a pretty poor percentage. As a teacher, I would have curved those grades :)

Jackie said...

I heard about these courses so it sounds like you and Skyeboy did a really good job over the weekend. Congrats.

Morganne said...

Saturday's Master/PIII Standard course was ugly and unsafe. There were 6 dogs who fell off the teeter (including Summit) and one dog is injured and out of commission for 6 weeks. I had heard that there will be complaints filed at USDAA although not sure of the details. Congrats on the high Q rate. The Q's were very low for most all of the classes this trial.

Greg S said...

Wow Morganne, I didnt realize that many dogs fell off the teeter. I did see Summit come off - hope he was not hurt. At last year's Pueblo USDAA, Skye fell off the teeter and banged his leg on the crossbar but was OK for the rest of the weekend. They work so hard for us, I hate to have us put them in danger with unsafe contact approaches.

Morganne said...

Jill Card's Risk was the dog that was seriously injured. He is out of commission for at least 6-8 weeks (pulled a tendon in his shoulder). Liz Blasio's Ticket, Kat's Petey, and Summit fell off the teeter... I can't remember the other dogs. Summit screamed because it hurt but he did not sustain an injury. Thanks to Sarah who evaluated him. It was just scary.