Runs from the CKC show last week

Here are Rip's runs. Two of his standard runs were mostly missed so I didnt include them.

AKC at the Denver Stockshow

This is Colorado's biggest AKC show - it's 4 days long, and is combined with the CKC Cluster - including Rally, Obedience and Confirmation. It's held at the big Denver Stockshow facility and is 3 rings of indoor agility.


We played 3 of the 4 days. Unfortunately, my work needed me to fly to California just before the trial, so though  I had planned my flight to get back to Denver at 6:30pm Thursday, which should get me home by 8pm, the flight-delay gods were working against me and imposed delay after delay. I ultimately got home just before midnight, and that left me just 5 hours before needing to get back up to leave for the show!


We got there in time to get checked in and do the first walkthroughs. This was Rip's first trial entered in Excellent A for both Std and JWW, which is probably easier with less conflicts than being spread about the classes. 


Skye ran Standard first and we had a pretty good run for a Q! Nice way to start off the show. He then got to run in Exc. FAST.  This weekend we did not manage to get any Exc. FAST Q's - it just wasnt meant to be.  We ran JWW near the end of the day and unfortunately Skye dropped a bar, and then popped out of the weaves - its unusual for him to drop bars, but not all that uncommon to get a weave pop!


Rip got to run JWW first, and he ran awesome for his first ever Excellent JWW Q! Its so great to see him able to get through a course without knocking bars now. He ran well in Standard, though did not get the Q. I dont recall what the issue was on this run - we did not get any Standard Q's this weekend in Excellent, but he was really close. I believe the issues along the way were a skipped weavepole, a misread for an offcourse, and a missed dogwalk contact. Generally though, he ran very well with good focus and handled these courses like the champ that he's going to be!


Rip also had a great weekend in FAST - we came into the show with just 1 Novice FAST Q, since we almost never see the game in Colorado. So, on Saturday and on Sunday Rip got nearly all the points including the easy distance challenges and 1st place in both. That let us move up to Open FAST for Sunday. He got to run against his girlfriend Vega (among others) and Vega beat us since we were slightly over time, which subtracted points from our 79 point total. Vega took 1st and Rip took 2nd. He is a far better distance dog than Skye is, and I hope that trend continues into Excellent.


For Skye, he got a Q in JWW on Saturday, setting us up for another chance at a double Q. This time, in Standard he knocked the top bar of the triple. Bummer with the bars for Skye this weekend!


Rip did not Q JWW or STD on Saturday or Sunday, though on Sunday he ran perfectly in JWW except for one bar on a jump coming out of a tunnel - it was just a tough turn with speed. Cool thing is, he and Skye ran 1/100th of a second apart - 29.92 vs 29.93.


Skye had finally pulled it together on Sunday and Q'd both JWW and STD for a double Q! This was after a disaster of a FAST run in the morning.


My blooper of the weekend came in Rip's STD run first thing in the morning Sunday. There was a tire/jump/jump pinwheel before turning to the teeter. I planned a front cross before the teeter, which I did, and found myself straddling the teeter plank and moving forward. I had to put my hands on the teeter and push off it to avoid falling up the teeter. Of course, Rip wasnt able to take it, and got a refusal. I put him back on and we continued - he had a really great run except for my blooper! 


I will post videos soon

Rip and Skye runs from Latigo AKC

AKC at the not-so-cold Latigo

January at Latigo is always a risk - one year it was about 5 degrees out, and not a whole lot warmer inside. We got lucky with a little bit of a warmup leading up to the trial (Friday was 60 degrees) and then about 50+ on Saturday, and maybe 45 on Sunday, so not so bad really, though it felt warmer outside in the sun than in the arena!

This was our first AKC show since the Thanksgiving trial at the same location. I thought the judge's courses were good with challenging aspects, but very fair for the most part.

On Saturday, Skye had one of those hardly-ever situations where the course turned left but he went right. That resulted in a backjump, but the rest of the standard course went well. I saw on the tape that I did not rotate soon enough for him to know where we were going.

He ran a nice Jumpers run though, so we got a Q for the day.

Rip had a good standard run and hit all his contacts. His AFrame especially is nowhere close to what I want for a finished product - he gets to the top and comes down very slowly, but better than a big launch I suppose. No trouble with the chute this trial, and the rest was clean for a Q - yeah!

Rip ran his first ever Exc. JWW course and did a really great job. There was an offcourse trap right before the weaves that got a lot of dogs, including Rip, but still it was a great run and even with the offcourse, he was within .7 seconds of Skye's time.

For Sunday, we again started with Standard. This time Skye ran fast and clean and even managed to get 3rd place! Sweet.

We ran a jumpers course that was going to force me into two consecutive rear crosses, along with 3 front crosses. I botched the second rear cross, pushing Skye off the jump, so we didn't get any Double Q's this weekend, but still ended up 50% overall - cant really complain.

Rip's Standard run was not great - he did some sightseeing at the top of the AFrame and was a bit distracted in the beginning of the run. He took an offcourse tire, and then came off the table after the weaves. We finished the second half of the run much better than the first. I was shocked to find out that even with those 2 faults, it was still a Q, which earned us Rip's Open Standard title!

In his Exc. JWW run, we really ran a great run. So proud of his focus and jumping. The last jump was the triple, and the top bar came down, but still, what a great run. A big "awwwww" was heard from the crowd when the bar fell. Rip was only about 2.5 seconds off the 1st place time, which I am really happy with, since he was pretty wide on a number of turns, (worth about a second or so), and I am trying to speed up his weaves, which would be worth another second.

So Rip also went 50% and earned his title so we are now in Excellent for Std and JWW.  Our next show is 'CKC' - a big event in Denver in a couple weeks at the stockshow. We are doing 3 days, including FAST, and a demo run of T2B which should be fun.

It was great hanging out with a whole bunch of folks from FAAD - I think we had 10 students entered in this trial, and even more came to watch and support - such a great group!