Skye and I did the USDAA trial in Laramie over the weekend. It was not nearly as successful as I had hoped for, though there were some bright moments.
On Friday (they started at 4pm), we started with Gamblers and looking at the gamble, I just knew Skye was not going to get it. We were to go over a jump, and then send out to the chute which was out past the teeter. Skye loves the teeter, so I knew that is what we'd get, and we did. I had a nice opening though, with two very nice dogwalks.
We then did Performance Steeplechase and had a really good run and got 1st place.
The last run for Friday was Snooker and it was bad - jump a red, do a jump / 6 poles sequence for the 7pts, and then Skye blew me off and took the offcourse #6 tunnel. 3 obstacles and done. He did give me a very nice leadout though, probably 50ft.
Saturday we only had 2 runs. It was like a very long, drawn out AKC show. In the morning we ran Jumpers, and we really did have a good run but with 1 bar down, so NQ. After waiting 7 hours, I then ran Standard. I was worried about the AF / tunnel discrimination coming off the table so I positioned myself to take the tunnel out of the picture, or so I thought. What I really did was take the tunnel AND Aframe out of the picture and caused Skye to run around the AF into the other end of the tunnel. When he came out, I told him to climb up, and he went back into the tunnel, so I told the judge we were done and we left. I was really mad until I looked at the tape and saw it was mostly my fault.
I elected to not run Perf. Grand Prix on Saturday as we already are qualified and had a 1st place bye from Pueblo.
On Sunday we had 3 runs scheduled, plus the 2nd round of Steeplechase.
We ran another round of Standard, and this time had a nice run, but we got called for the dogwalk contact. It required a 90 degree turn off the dogwalk to a jump and many dogs left early.
We then had pairs and ran with Doc and Kai - a pretty reliable team. We fortunately ran this clean and got the Q. That's our 5th pairs Q meaning I don't need any more for Performance ADCH. I am very happy about that as I really dont like running Pairs since Skye is a jerk to 90% of the dogs out there. I always have to manage him and make sure he doesn't try to go after my pairs partner dog.
Next was Round 2 of Steeplechase. There were 3 other 22" P dogs running and we ran last. The first two dogs got offcourses and the dog that ran before me was called for the AFrame contact. In reality, we could run conservatively and should still be faster than those other 3 dogs by an easy margin. This course called for 2 AFrames, and as we approached the first one, Skye more or less stopped short in front of it and wouldn't go up. WTF. I told him again a couple times to climb it and finally he did. I am sure we wasted about 3 or 4 seconds on that, but it seemed like an eternity. We ran the rest of the course fine, and had no faults so YEA!! we got 1st place and a check for $21 in winnings.
To finish the day, we got another Snooker course. I felt good about getting all 7's in this one (7pt was a spread out serpentine of jumps). We were going great until Skye dropped the bar on the 3rd red jump. I then had to think about what to do and try to make it to the close, but Skye took one of the jumps in the serpentine so we were done.
Not sure what has happened to our Snooker runs lately. Before it seemed like we Q'd every one we ran, but I think I've managed to NQ the last 4 or 5.
6 comments:
Congrats on your Steeplechase win. I thought the judge had a fun course for Round 1.
Glad you got your final pairs Q. I checked the premium and they're not offering it at Regionals so we couldn't have helped you anyway.
Saturday was a long day for the Masters dogs. I felt bad for Lola. I was glad I had the baby dog to run as well or I would have been bored silly.
Yeah Elayne, I looked at the Regionals premium and saw that there were no Pairs runs anyway, so it all worked out.
I really wish I had entered Rip in a couple runs - it would have made Saturday less tiring with all that waiting. I swear I get more tired just sitting around like that than actually doing something all day.
I meant to ask you how come you didn't have Rip entered at Laramie????
Congrats on the nice runs! Summit also got his 5th Masters Relay Q and his title.
Morganne, I had decided to wait until I was happier with Rip's contacts. In hindsight, I should have at least entered Jumpers and maybe done Gamblers or Snooker as I could avoid contacts if I needed to. He is coming along great on his contacts in practice, so I do need to see how they hold up in a trial. The only thing that worries me now with his running dogwalk is he is so blasted fast over it, I can't keep up!
Are you training turns off the DW too?
Yes, you should have entered Rip in Jumpers, Gamblers, and Snooker for the handling practice. Summit handles so differently at home than he does at a trial.
You could also just enter Rip in AKC jumpers too.
Good luck with the contact training. Smart move not to trial in Standard until you're happy with the final behavior.
I have started incorportating some turns off the contacts for Rip. Thus far, probably not more than 30 degrees of a turn. I will be working hard to get him to turn when something enticing is sitting at the end of the contact, like the open end of a tunnel. I've entered him in some Standard runs at our DOCNA trial that we host here (Sept 5/6). Its home-field advantage, so I am hoping he maintains criteria because it't the same place & equipment as he trains on. We shall see! Then its DAM team time!
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