Here's a few pics that I recently purchased from Ken Gee
A couple tunnel pics from an outdoor USDAA trial. The yellow one of Rip is cool as he took on a yellowish color.
And a couple chute pictures - the one of Skye is great with the bug-eye look. Rip is coming out of the chute looking very serious and not his usual goofy self!
Last weekend I attended the local 3-day post-Thanksgiving AKC show that's 10 minutes from home. It was a nice feeling to not 'need' any Q's to qualify for Nationals this time. This is the last show of the year for those still needing double Q's or points to qualify for AKC Nationals in Reno next year.
My goal for the show was to run for speed and try and not do any lead-out's at all, to see how it might motivate my dogs to go fast right from the start. This is something I had been working on in practice and Rip especially seemed to respond really well to it. Skye also seemed to enjoy me taking off with him.
I was also hoping to maybe get a Standard Q for Rip so that he could start next year in Excellent B for both STD and JWW.
I did put together a video of Rip's 6 runs this weekend. In all, we only got 2 Q's, but Rip really ran awesome the whole time and put up some very fast times. On Saturday, we got that Exc. STD-A Q to move us into "B" finally!! On the same day, he also Q'd JWW and as it turned out, Rip and Skye ended up taking 2nd and 3rd place in JWW respectively. A very cool day for us!
On Friday, I ended up slipping a little in JWW for Rip and turned a front cross into a blind - that cost me the run as he come out of the tunnel and right over an offcourse jump.
He followed that with a great NQ Standard run where I think his tail ended up hitting the top bar of the triple.
Saturday, Skye ran Standard first, and he had a great run but missed the dogwalk contact, 2nd obstacle to the end. He will do this, when the dogwalk is right near the finish line.
So, when it was Rip's turn, I had to remember to really ask for the stop on the dogwalk contact. We were clean up to that point and I made sure to stop him - he did, and we got that Q!
Saturday's jumpers course was interesting and had some people worried about the fast line into a serpentine, and then out of the weaves there was a tunnel where most handlers decided to run around the back of it.
I worked the serpentine by hustling and doing a front cross between the first two jumps to get a good turn, and then front again after the 3rd jump in the serp. For the weaves/tunnel situation, I figured if I could just be 8 feet off the weaves or so, then I would have plenty of time to not run behind, and put them in the tunnel and fly by for a blind at the exit, grabbing them for a good turn to the finish line of jumps. It worked awesome for both dogs and as mentioned Rip got 2nd and Skye 3rd. This was Rip's 9th Q toward his MXJ!
On Sunday, we ran Standard first again. Goofy freaky boy got himself spooked by the leash runner behind him. He hates having anyone behind him when he starts a run - I had to physically move him to look at the first obstacle, but when it was time to run, he took off like a shot! Unfortunately he dropped a bar on a sharp turn after the dogwalk, and then followed that by leaving the teeter early, but he ran great in this challenging course.
In Jumpers, we had the broad jump in Exc B, which we hardly ever see. I took it for granted and didn't support it very well, and Rip came off the line and moved with me, skipping the broadjump altogether. The rest of the run was good though and all the bars stayed up.
Skye had a decent weekend. He started by running clean on Friday for another Double Q - I think this is #15 toward Mach 2.
As I had mentioned, Skye jumped the dogwalk contact in Standard on an otherwise clean run. He was only about a second behind Rip in this run. In his JWW on Saturday, Skye was really moving out and he ran it only about 1/2 second slower than Rip did. I love running my dogs in the cold weather - they run FAST!
Finally on Sunday, I was pushing Skye for speed and I left him in the weaves, apparently too much so in his opinion as he exited the weaves at pole 10 to come see me. The rest of the run was good and fast.
In JWW, he hit a bar of the double, which was the 2nd obstacle. The bar seemed to drop late, so he must have barely hit it. He finished the rest of the run nicely, though he didnt seem to be running as fast as he had the rest of the weekend.
Here's a cool picture of Rip that I bought at the show - the sun was shining right at the exit of the weaves! Notice how he keeps the eye closest to the pole shut.
