MACH Fail

I forgot that I never went back and updated my blog on my MACH progress from last weekend's AKC show.

It turned out to be rather uneventful, complete with Zero double Q's for the 3 days. Something simple went amok each day, and for the first time in who knows, I did not get a single Q in JWW.

These were my JWW runs:
Friday - 1 dropped bar
Saturday - 1 refusal
Sunday - 1 missed weave entry.

For Standard, we did manage to get 1 Q.
Friday - 1 refusal
Saturday - The Q day!
Sunday - 1 popped weave

He was running well for me, and maybe going for the double Qs actually caused me to overhandle or not run as I would.

We also got to play FAST, and we did get 1 Q in Exc. B Fast. We got the distance challenge on another FAST run, but it was outside in the rain and mud with bad footing for both of us, and he dropped the triple jump, and missed an AF contact, so we just missed the minimum points required. I didnt know about the AF contact until I saw the scribe sheet - I could have gone back and redone it!

Ah well, out next AKC show is mid July. Its also a 3 day, and currently I am only in for Friday, and am on the waitlist for Sat & Sun.
Greg

Possible MACH this weekend!

Skye and I are doing 3 days of AKC agility this weekend starting tomorrow.

He's laying here next to me asleep, but his feet are dream running, though its more likely to be chasing a dream rabbit than doing agility!

We have 18 Double Q's, so technically its possible to get our MACH - our last two trials gave us two double Q's per trial, so we are on a bit of a roll, but that roll can easily slam into the brick wall of NQs, so I will be cautiously optimistic.

Looking back at my records, Skye and I ran our very first AKC run in November 2007. I got my very first Double Q in September 2008.

So here's to a good AKC weekend!

Rip and Skye do DOCNA at Paws 4 Friendship

Our club hosts 2 DOCNA trials a year and we had our first one this past weekend on Saturday and Sunday (giving everyone their Memorial day off from agility).

I am REALLY pleased with how my boys ran this weekend.

Rip has been on trialing hiatus while I retrained his failed running contacts into a 2on2off. I have been working with Rip on these for about 2 months now. He hit and held every contact with the exception of one Aframe where he got to the peak, stopped and I said 'come on lets go' and he leaped it.
His AFrames were sometimes slow - definitely slower than I want his eventual performance to be, but this is an awesome start for a retraining.

As far as how he did - Rip managed to get 7 Q's in his 12 runs. Even his NQ's were not bad - he had 2 nice clean Standard runs except for a dropped bar in each, and some crazyness during a Snakes run that put us over time once, and the aforementioned jumped AFrame contacts in another.

Rip even qualified in the Specialist North American Challenge run, with a 2nd place just behind Skye, to qualify for the DOCNA nationals that will be held in Grand Junction this year (not sure that I will go, but now have the option).
Most of his Q's were 1st places, with a couple 2nds thrown in. He even ran a jumpers course in 14.5 seconds at 5.7yps.

Skye went 8/12 Q's and ran very well for me, especially considering how warm it was on Saturday. It was in the 80's, with lots of wind.
One of the runs he NQ'd was round 1 of Jumpers - he came in at .03 seconds over time. DOCNA has some ridiculous requirement of 4.5yps for the Comp 20" division for jumpers. They are known for very tight standard course times in jumpers. In round 2 (the reverse of round 1) I told him we would have to go faster, and I pushed him to being 2 full seconds faster for 1st place!
Skye got 6 1st's and 2 2nd's and as mentioned, qualified 1st for North American Challenge.

All in all a great weekend for us!