AKC in the cold at Brighton, CO

Fortunately we had an indoor trial this weekend at the Adams County Fairgrounds in Brighton. It was soooo cold, the high temperature on Saturday was something like 25 degrees. While driving up, we saw many accidents and at one point on I-25, there was a pile up with at least 12 cars smashed and in the ditch, including a police car. We made it OK though a little late, and I had to run Skye with the 20A group.

I am disappointed in my handling of Skye this weekend. We seldom have offcourses, but on both of our JWW runs, I took my eyes off him and he grabbed an off course jump. Since I wasnt actually seeing him take the wrong jump, I KNOW I wasn't watching him! Lesson learned the hard way.

We had a good Standard run on Saturday but he pulled his famous take-the-tunnel-instead-of-AFrame maneuver. The setup made the tunnel the obvious choice for the dog, so I cant blame him too much - a lot of dogs got that offcourse, but I did make sure to get his attention before it, and he took off anyway.

Our Standard run on Sunday was clean, though we had a slow sit on the table, and I over handled the dogwalk/tunnel discrimination - I wasn't going to lose yet Another Q due to that. The courses this weekend seemed to be wheeled really tight, thus the times allowed didn't provide the normal cushion, and we ended up with a Standard Q but only 10 MACH points (our usual is 20).

So this leaves me still needing 25 points to qualify for AKC Nationals. We have 1 more AKC show after Thanksgiving, so I have 6 runs to get the points. It shouldn't be a problem. I hope. Fingers crossed.

Mr Rip had a good weekend. He ran two great JWW runs. On Saturday, he dropped one bar at the jump after the tunnel, but he ran fast and accurate - no bobbles and his weaves were great. He actually had the fastest time on Saturday of all Novice JWW dogs by 5 seconds. On Sunday, he got the JWW Q with a tougher course than Saturday's. It had pinwheels and more side changes. He was the fastest of all the Novice JWW dogs by 3 seconds.

Our Standard runs were actually really nice too, though he absolutely launched his dogwalk contacts in both runs. I mean, he left from halfway down the board. His running dogwalk has deteriorated so much its just not funny. I am still training with the hoop, and I need to do lots more repetitions and I am going to change a couple things as Katrina suggested. If he doesn't hit any in the November competition, I will have to make some more drastic decisions on his contacts. I do not want to have to go to 2-on-2-off, but if thats where I need to be to help him understand, so be it. For now, I am going to have to put him on the dogwalk at least every day, and I may do a couple of 2 minute sessions a day. He loves to work for the squeaky ball and I dont think this will be overdoing it for him. Besides, I have a vacation coming up at the end of the week and he's going to get a whole week off any agility anyway.

I will post some video soon.