Perception is not reality

This was interesting - Skye's Excellent JWW and Rip's Open JWW courses from Sunday (see post below) had the same first 10 or so obstacles.
This is a great example of how perception is not always reality.
I felt like Skye was really flying through this opening, and that Rip was going slow. I decided to put them side by side to see, and I was amazed to see that they were basically running neck and neck until the weaves. Skye has better weaves so he got a stride on Rip there.
I know that Rip does have a lot more speed that he only uses occasionally, and I expect as he gets more confident, he will get much faster. Skye was giving me probably the speed that he can - I dont expect that he would run this faster.

Thanksgiving AKC Fun!

(This is an older picture of Rip that I just bought this weekend as it was on sale)

There's a local (10 minutes away) 3day AKC trial after Thanksgiving every year that I like to attend. The downside is the arena is not heated, and is often affectionately called things like The Icebox, The Arctic, The Meat Locker, etc. This weekend was no exception - you could definitely see your breath in the mornings as we had temps in the teens, though it warmed up enough to not need your coat by the afternoon.

Skye and Rip had a really good showing at this trial.
Friday is Excellent only, so Rip was only along for the ride. Skye had two really good runs, and Q'd JWW with about 8th place, though he was called for his AFrame contact on an otherwise nice and fast Standard run. Skye loves to run in the cold!

On Saturday, I had a perfect day with the boys - both went 2 for 2! I again had fast running Skye and he placed 3rd in Standard (about 30 dogs in the 20" group this weekend). He followed it up with a really nice JWW run, I think about 7th place.

At our last AKC trial, Rip had finally moved to Open Standard, though he already had 1 qualifier in Open Jumpers. So, on Saturday he got his first open Standard Q with a nice run, though slow on his contacts (better than launched!). He also had a nice JWW run for a Q, but he ran cautiously - he has a LOT more speed to give me.

On Sunday, we weren't quite as successful, but it was still a good day. Skye missed his dogwalk contact so that run turned to a training run, and I pushed him and he did well. I mishandled the last 3 obstacles and caused him to spin and end up taking the finish jump from the back side! He was having a really fast run up to that point. In JWW, there was an interesting sequence from the weaves over 3 jumps to a tunnel, with the offcourse side staring right at the dog. I was out of position for my planned line and tried to throw in a last minute front cross that didnt work as I was too far past the jump and I pulled Skye off the jump instead.

Rip missed the same dogwalk contact in his Open Standard run. When I gave him a big 'Oh No', he then went around the chute - so we just ran for fun and finished it upbeat. The last run of the day for us was Rip's Open JWW, and he nailed it! He had a great run, and now he has his Open JWW Title. Next trial we will be trying Excellent A JWW!
I have video that I will post soon.

Rips runs from SWAT USDAA

Here are Rip's runs from last weekend's trial.

Took the left turn to Albuquerque

I did actually - had to take I25 south, then left on I40 in Albuquerque, to get to the fairgrounds for the SWAT USDAA agility trial this past weekend. (if you dont know the reference, you need to watch more bugs bunny!)

One of my goals this year was to get Rip out of Novice/Starters classes in both AKC and USDAA. We met that goal for AKC over the summer, but for USDAA, we still needed 1 more Standard Q - one that eluded us at the October trial in Fountain, so there was my motivation to drive 6 hrs.

I am really happy to say that the only bar that Rip dropped all weekend was the 1st bar in his second leg of our Pairs run. This is a huge accomplishment, especially considering we ran 10 runs over the 2 days.
So, not only did we manage to Q that Standard run on Saturday (2nd place of the 16 starters dogs), but then we managed to also Q Sunday's Standard run with a 3rd (Ms. Vega had an awesome 1st place run in that one)!! This means Rip has his 'AD' title and will be moving up to Advanced for the next show.

Also, by keeping up all the bars this weekend, we had a great Jumpers run with a Q.
The pairs run I mentioned was run with Kim & Quin as our teammates, since neither of us had a partner assigned. They usually only pair small dogs with big dogs as a last resort, but in our case it worked great - we had Fast Quin, and even with Rip's bar down, we still got 2nd place and a Q to finish Rip's pairs title - Masters Pairs, here we come!

We also ran a nice Advanced Snooker run, getting all the way through the closing for a Q & 1st.

No Master Gambler Q's for Rip this weekend, but he gave it a good try in both cases. We came close in Grand Prix and Steeplechase too, but no Qs.

For the Skye-boy, I found that they don't seem to grow the dogs very big in New Mexico. For nearly every class he ran in, he was the only 22" performance dog. There were maybe 2 or 3 classes where he ran against a huge Great Dane, but otherwise it was just us against the clock.

Skye ran very well with no offcourses, no missed contacts, no popped weaves and I think just 1 dropped bar in Gamblers and one in Grand Prix.
We ended up with 10 first places (hahaha) and 7 Q's. We did get another Snooker Super Q on Sunday - they combined all the performance dogs together and gave out just 1. We also were the only dog who ran clean in round 2 of Perf. Steeplechase, to win me $5 !
With the 2 Q's Skye got in Snooker, we earned a new title - Bronze Accomplished Snooker Dog (or something like that). When the building was cool in the mornings, I had fast Skyeboy, but as it warmed up, I had the slower version, but still he did a great job.

I saw that the club plans on hosting this trial again next year at the same location on the same weekend - I would go again as it was a well run trial, plenty of parking up close, plenty of bleacher seating, good food vendor, etc. The indoor surface was good - no dust, and lots of room for the 2 rings.

I will try and post some video soon.