What a bad blogger I have been.... It's been a week now since Skye earned his MACH at the Mile Hi Golden Retriever show. On Friday, we got a double Q to put us at 19 total, so the pressure was on. Saturday we ran Standard first and were clean. Jumpers was going great, but after a turn from the weaves Skye dropped a bar. I could hear the big "ohhhhhhh" from the crowd to confirm that the bar went down.
Sunday, we started with Jumpers and Skye had a great clean run. The Standard course for Sunday was challenging and I wondered if we could pull it off - I decided to try and breath and go at it with a clear head, and he ran Great and got the MACH! Yeah baby!
Here's the video of that JWW and STD.
So nice to get the MACH title and be able to just run and not worry about double Qs for a while!
Chaos Crew
Saturday, July 24, 2010
Thursday, July 1, 2010
USDAA at Black Forest Park
Skye and Rip got to play USDAA last weekend at the nice secluded Black Forest Regional Park. The weather was wacky - started out hot on Saturday, but then we had showers and it got cold enough for you to wish you brought a coat, then the sun was back and it was hot again, until the next batch of showers and then it was damn cold as we continued to play agility into the darkness (we finished about 8:30 or so on Saturday). We even had the big bad burst of wind that tried to take out all the shelters - I only saw one mangled.
Going into this trial, Skye needed just 1 more Gamble Q to get his APD title (the Performance equivalent of ADCH). After this trial, he STILL needs 1 Gamble Q. Ugh. I entered him in the 2 Gamblers runs, as well as 2 Snooker and a jumpers and a Standard over the weekend. Really, I just want the Gamble, but want him to have something else to do while we are there. Saturday's Gamble should have been real easy for him - it was a jump out to a tunnel, and out of the tunnel there was an AFrame/Tunnel discrimination, with the AF closer to me and being the correct obstacle. I overhandled it, and called Skye right off the AF as he was heading for it. My bad, and blown Q. Sunday's Gamble was setup almost identically to Saturday's, only this time the tunnel was the correct answer, so it was a push out of the first tunnel, out to the next tunnel. Skye blew me off and took the AFrame instead.
He ended up with just a Jumpers Q for the weekend. He had a good Standard run but dropped the first bar. One of the snooker runs was going great until he dropped the #4 bar in the closing.
For Rip, this was his first trial back, other than our home-turf DOCNA trial, since I went back and trained a 2on2off contact instead of his very unreliable running contact.
I am happy to say that Rip hit all but 1 of his contacts this weekend. The one he missed was an AFrame when he was flying and did a big leap. Not sure what was going through his head for that one. On the downside, his AFrames were not meeting criteria even when he was hitting the contact - he was not stopping. His dogwalks were much nicer.
Rip ended up getting both his Gamble Q's in Advanced Gamblers (take that Skye Boy), and that now moves him up to Master Gamblers. He is still in Starters for everything else though! He got a Starters Pairs Q, and a Starters Snooker Q as well.
We still dont have any Starters Standard Q's, but now that contacts shouldnt be our issue, its looking promising. He did pretty well keeping bars up over the weekend. He did drop 1 bar in an awesome Starter Jumpers run where he ran over 6 YPS. That one didnt get taped as it was during the nasty wind burst and everyone was holding down the ez ups instead of filming. His other Starters Jumpers was a crazy offcourse run. The AFrame that he launched was in Standard, so that took care of an otherwise clean run.
I am still having issues with Rip popping out of the weaves. He did it again a few times this weekend. Very frustrating as I dont ever get this during practice - he gets more nervous when there are a lot of people around and I thing this is affecting his performance. On the plus side, he is nailing all his entries, so if I can get him to stop popping them, all will be great.
I need to continue to train tighter turns, and his focus on ME and not on what he thinks should be next. I also have to work wraps, as he tends to backjump them and that bit us a few times this weekend.
Going into this trial, Skye needed just 1 more Gamble Q to get his APD title (the Performance equivalent of ADCH). After this trial, he STILL needs 1 Gamble Q. Ugh. I entered him in the 2 Gamblers runs, as well as 2 Snooker and a jumpers and a Standard over the weekend. Really, I just want the Gamble, but want him to have something else to do while we are there. Saturday's Gamble should have been real easy for him - it was a jump out to a tunnel, and out of the tunnel there was an AFrame/Tunnel discrimination, with the AF closer to me and being the correct obstacle. I overhandled it, and called Skye right off the AF as he was heading for it. My bad, and blown Q. Sunday's Gamble was setup almost identically to Saturday's, only this time the tunnel was the correct answer, so it was a push out of the first tunnel, out to the next tunnel. Skye blew me off and took the AFrame instead.
He ended up with just a Jumpers Q for the weekend. He had a good Standard run but dropped the first bar. One of the snooker runs was going great until he dropped the #4 bar in the closing.
For Rip, this was his first trial back, other than our home-turf DOCNA trial, since I went back and trained a 2on2off contact instead of his very unreliable running contact.
I am happy to say that Rip hit all but 1 of his contacts this weekend. The one he missed was an AFrame when he was flying and did a big leap. Not sure what was going through his head for that one. On the downside, his AFrames were not meeting criteria even when he was hitting the contact - he was not stopping. His dogwalks were much nicer.
Rip ended up getting both his Gamble Q's in Advanced Gamblers (take that Skye Boy), and that now moves him up to Master Gamblers. He is still in Starters for everything else though! He got a Starters Pairs Q, and a Starters Snooker Q as well.
We still dont have any Starters Standard Q's, but now that contacts shouldnt be our issue, its looking promising. He did pretty well keeping bars up over the weekend. He did drop 1 bar in an awesome Starter Jumpers run where he ran over 6 YPS. That one didnt get taped as it was during the nasty wind burst and everyone was holding down the ez ups instead of filming. His other Starters Jumpers was a crazy offcourse run. The AFrame that he launched was in Standard, so that took care of an otherwise clean run.
I am still having issues with Rip popping out of the weaves. He did it again a few times this weekend. Very frustrating as I dont ever get this during practice - he gets more nervous when there are a lot of people around and I thing this is affecting his performance. On the plus side, he is nailing all his entries, so if I can get him to stop popping them, all will be great.
I need to continue to train tighter turns, and his focus on ME and not on what he thinks should be next. I also have to work wraps, as he tends to backjump them and that bit us a few times this weekend.
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