Greg's Dog Blog with Skye and Rip!

USDAA and Patriots

2012-01-18T23:52:00.001-07:00

Last weekend we were at a USDAA trial at the Boulder County fairgrounds. Since I grew up in Massachusetts, I've remained a Patriots fan, even though I live in Broncos country. The Patriots - Broncos game was on Saturday, so I wore my Pats logo t-shirt to the trial. I did catch a lot of grief being nearly the only Patriots fan among a sea of blue and orange, but it was all in good fun. I was one of the few happy football fans the next day after the Patriots blew out the Broncos.

Anyway, onto the agility!
Rip and Skye were entered in everything - the trial was extra crowded and was originally supposed to be a 1 ring trial that turned into a 2 judge, 2 ring trial due to high turnout - seems everyone in Colorado is trying to qualify for USDAA Nationals now that it's going to be local this year.

On Thursday before the trial, Rip came up limping on a back leg. He probably slipped on the ice - not sure. I figured I would end up having to pull him from the trial, but come Saturday morning he seemed fine. I did run him the whole weekend, but Sunday night he was back to holding the leg up again. Looking at his runs, he is maybe a little slower than he should be - he knocked 3 bars all weekend, which isnt great, but not excessive. He's been on rest mode since then and isn't happy about it! He seems fine now, but I will keep him from running at all until at least this weekend.

As for how we did, Rip only got 1 Q this weekend, but it was a Grand Prix Q, so that's a good one to get! That was the 2nd one we needed to qualify for Nationals.
Rip ran a nice Standard course on Saturday, but he had 1 bar down on a wrap jump. He also did really well in Gamblers, and if he had succeeded in getting the gamble, he would have had 2nd place in the 22" group. He did give me a really nice distance teeter, but wouldnt push out to the next jump and took the trap jump instead.

In Steeplechase, the run was going well, but I somehow pulled him off his line to the AFrame. By the time I put him back on it and we finished, we had taken too much time to make it to round 2. Then in Pairs, I thought we ran a good course - turns out I didn't walk the course correctly and took a jump from the 'normal' side when it was supposed to be a threadle, but we were clean on MY course!

In Sunday's Standard run, I did a run-with and he knocked the 2nd jump and then went in the wrong end of the tunnel, though the rest of the run was good. We had an OK snooker run, though not a planned! The 7pt was an AFrame, but there was the #4 tunnel under the frame. We could do 4 reds, so I planned for the #2 tunnel, and 3 AFrames. On two of the frame attempts, Rip actually ran into the tunnel instead! That wasn't going to be good for a superQ! He ended up hitting the bar in the part B jump of the #5 sequence as it was a slice, so not enough points to Q.
Finally, we were having a nice jumpers and I did a Rip taboo move. I rotated too soon on a front cross, giving too much of a collection cue and brought Rip to a stop before the jump he was supposed to take, so we incurred a refusal. Except for that, he ran it nicely.
Here are some of Rip's runs

Skye had a pretty good weekend. On my quest for PDCH-Bronze, we just need Gamblers and Pairs Qs. As it turns out, we Q'd each of them this weekend! That leaves just 2 more Gamblers and 1 more Pairs needed.
Skye Q'd both of his Standard runs this weekend. He had been missing all of this AF and DW contacts at our last AKC trial, so I had been reinforcing contact behavior over the past week. This really paid off, as Skye did not miss any contacts all weekend, though he gave me a couple of the slowest AFrames he has ever done!
We also Q'd Perf. Grand Prix, giving Skye the 2 Q's he needs to qualify for Nationals. That makes him fully qualified for Perf team, grand prix and steeplechase.
As mentioned, we Q'd pairs - we ran with Katrina and Baby again and we were the 1st place performance team.
He did a real nice job getting the Gamblers Q. Skye has a good distance teeter, and I was able to get him to push out to the correct jumps to finish the gamble.

Though Snooker is usually our game, I underestimated a pull through and Skye ended up taking a #1 followed by another #1 very early in the run for a total of 4 points!
In jumpers, he knocked 1 bar, so we didn't get that Q either, but overall he ran really well for me!

We are playing more USDAA in a little over a week - this time with DAM team. I still need to get Rip qualified in team, so hopefully we will get it.

Skye's runs

Goals Recap

2012-01-05T14:03:00.000-07:00

Earlier this year, I posted my annual goals for Skye and Rip. Now is a good time to recap and see what kind of progress was made against the goals.

For Skye:

Short-term goals:

Continue practicing with toys and not food, keeping Skye very motivated during practice sessions.. Met - except for rewarding on contacts, I always use a toy instead of treats as rewards.
Work on various distance skills, like turns from a tunnel and better push outs. Partial - we have worked on these, but Skye is still not a great gambler dog. We only got 4 out of 11 USDAA gamblers Q's in 2011.
Keep working on the startline in practice – this has been paying off as he’s been much better during competition.. Partial - I have found that it's more motivating to Skye (and Rip) if I just run with them off the line, so I have been using startlines less anyway.
Need to proof frontcrossing the AFrame – these tend to push him off the side. Get him to keep driving down even if I am in front of the frame. Met - I have not found this to be an issue lately.
Work on being able to really peel off the weaves without causing popouts. Partial - I think this is better, but I recall a trial in November when he popped early.

Long-term goals:

In 2011, I would like to earn Skye’s USDAA PDCH-Bronze. This will take getting 9 more Pairs Qs, 7 Gamble Qs, 3 Jumpers Qs, and 6 Standard Qs. This will not be an easy task. Almost - At the end of 2011, Skye needs just 2 more Pairs Qs and 3 more Gamble Qs for PDCH-Bronze.
Qualify for USDAA Nationals and attend the event in October in Kentucky. Met - had a good time at Nationals!
Qualify for AKC Nationals for 2012, as we have done the last 2 years. Met - We qualified and have entered the nationals.
Earn at least two more placements in AKC. We managed to get a 2nd and 3rd in 2010, so I would like to meet and improve on that. This can be challenging as we never compete against less than 25 dogs. More typically, its 50 - 75 dogs in the 20" class. Met - I didnt keep good track of this, but we definitely had a few 3rd places and a 2nd place.

For Rip:

Short-term goals:

More practicing on the contact retraining. Continue to use the target to get him driving into position – don’t try to fade it so fast in practice. Met - Rip's contacts are holding up really well in competition now.
Keep working his bar issues by varying jumpheights, including lots of crossing on jumpers type courses, doing figure-8 jumps, and other jumping exercises. Met - Rip is really doing well keeping bars up. He recently Q'd his last 6 straight Master Jumpers courses in USDAA and is just 1 Q away from MXJ in AKC!
Continue to push for more speed in the weaves. Periodically open the channels to get him moving faster and faster. Once a month, film the weave performance and time it to measure any improvements. Met - I've continued to practice with channels opened a little, and in competition, he is really doing much better with some fabulous weave performances.
Be more consistent with practice outside of classtime. I’d like to practice at least 2 times a week outside of class, and would prefer 3 or 4 times a week. Partial - Not sure I met the 3 or 4 times a week, but we are practicing usually 2 times a week outside of class.
Enforce contact performance in competition – at the very least, mark an intentionally jumped contact with a down. Partial - I still have a hard time not getting caught up in the moment and quick releasing. We have had plenty of wait-to-release performances, but nowhere near 100%.

Long-term goals:

For AKC, I would like to earn Rip’s first Double Q, which will require us to get out of Open Standard, and Exc. A Jumpers. Almost - Rip earned his AX title and moved into Exc. B Std for 1 run at his last trial in November, so we didnt get but 1 chance. We did however get a 'virtual' double Q by Qing Exc. A Std and Exc. B JWW.
Qualify for USDAA Nationals and attend the event in October in Kentucky. We are already qualified in Team, and have 1 Q in Steeplechase. Met - we had a good time at Nationals!
Improve our speed enough to be within 2 or 3 seconds of 1st place in a big AKC or USDAA competition. Met - Rip has been picking up speed. He got a 2nd place in JWW in November and has been within 2 seconds of the 1st place dog frequently.
Advance to the Masters level in USDAA and earn Rip’s MAD. We need 3 Adv. Standard Qs to get to Masters in everything, and then will need 3 Master Standard Qs and 1 Q in each of the games (we already have Pairs and Gamblers) Almost - We got into Masters, though the Standard legs have been tough for us. We have masters titles in Pairs and Jumpers, are just 1 Q away from Gamblers title, and need 2 more super Qs for our Snooker title. NO Master Standard legs yet!

A few pics for the end of the year.

2011-12-30T09:33:00.002-07:00

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!

An "AX"cellent AKC show

2011-12-02T23:12:00.001-07:00

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.

USDAA in Albq New Mexico

2011-11-21T22:24:00.001-07:00

A week ago, I traveled down to Albuquerque for the November SWAT USDAA trial with Katrina. I went to this one last year and had a good time so I thought I'd go again.

I stayed at the same La Quinta, which is only a couple miles from the fairgrounds trial site. I was happy to see that the homeless man who was living in the little dog park next to the hotel was not there this time. All was quiet at the dog park. I did find that one part of the park was full of those damn little sticker plants - as best as I can tell they are called goatheads or Puncturevines and the first night when we arrived and I took the dogs to potty there, those little fuckers were all attached to the leashes and the dog's feet. I had to stab myself a dozen times picking them out of Skye and Rip and off their leashes.

The Master's judge was Tom Kula, who often creates some interesting courses. He did not disappoint.

Rip started with Gamblers and he really did well, though he bailed off the teeter in the distance portion. He did a great job in the opening and had he stuck the teeter, we would have had 2nd place.

Skye then got to run Gamblers, and though he was a little slower than Rip, and also jumped his dogwalk contact, he DID manage to get the distance portion and stick his teeter for a nice Q!

Next up for Rip was Master Standard. We were looking for our 1st Master Standard Q since moving up a couple trials ago. This course had a 90 degree onside approach to the weaves, and I thought I would just send Rip and let him test his entries. He hit the entry (yeah) but then didnt collect and skipped the 2nd pole. I didn't bother to fix it (why EVER bother to fix weaves in Masters, unless you are playing Time + faults?). After that, we then had a bit more fun by missing the AFrame/tunnel discrimination, dropping a bar and jumping the dogwalk contact. Yeeee-hawwww!

Skye keept the Yee-haw going in his Standard run too! He dropped the 2nd bar and then he missed the AFrame/tunnel discrimination the other way, by taking the frame when it should have been tunnel, compared to Rip taking the tunnel instead of the frame. Skye otherwise did pretty good in this run though.

Grand Prix was up next and I figured that maybe Rip had the crazies out of his system and we could get a good GP run. He did really well on this tricky course, but I made him drop a bar before the AFrame/tunnel discrimination - I overhandled it based on the previous run's outcome as again the course called for the frame, and I really wanted to take the tunnel out of the picture. There were only 8 Q's of the 50 dogs between Perf and Championship.

For Skye, Perf. Grand Prix was a disappointment. We were doing fine and arrived at said AFrame/tunnel discrimination again. I clearly and obviously got ahead and indicated the frame. Skye committed to it, and then at the last moment, cut me off and went in the tunnel. I then ended the run and Skye and I did the slow walk of shame off the course. Between Gamblers, Standard and Grandprix, this was the 3rd straight run that Skye had not done what I indicated at the discrimination!

Next we had Snooker.
In an odd twist of fate, Rip's eh, so-so, not great run earned him his first Super Q! I wish I still had the course map, but essentially, the 7pt was a combination of a tunnel and 6 weaves and another 6 weaves. The 6 point was a jump and 6 weaves. We could do 4 reds.
I elected to do two 6's, a 4 and a 7. We ran somewhere in the middle of the pack, so I didnt get a lot of benefit in watching other handlers, but I did see Steve Moon & Slick end early with an offcourse, and also Kim Terrill & Steeple offcourse'd. We got all the way through the opening, but Rip was going slow and cautious, and wasnt reading my signals really well. He even missed the entry on the 2nd set of 6 poles and I had to put him back into them to get the 7 points. We were working on the #6 in the closing when time ran out, so we ended up with 41 points. Oddly enough, as this was a tough course, the 41 was good for 3rd place and a Super Q. Go figure - we have had some really awesome Snooker runs that did not earn one!

For Skye, as I dont need Super Q's, I was going more conservative, trying for 6,6,7 in the opening. We did well and got through the opening, though not very fast. We were working on the #7 in the closing when the buzzer went in the first set of 6 poles, so we ended up with just 42 points, but that was the highest score in all of Performance! Skye earned another Super Q - so both my guys got them on not really spectacular runs!

We ended the day with Jumpers.
Rip ran this nicely for a Q. I am really glad he is getting through jumpers courses while keeping up all the bars now - such a good boy! I ran this a little differently with Rip than I did for Skye - I put in two rear crosses for Rip where I used fronts for Skye. One reason was to give a better signal taking an offcourse tunnel out of the picture. There were not a lot of Q's on this course and Rip ended up in 3rd place.

Skye also ran this well and got a Q. As it turned out, both dogs were within a 4/100ths of each other!

Sunday started with Pairs, and we were running Performance dogs first.

Skye was paired with Rankine the Golden, and we did a good job. Skye had 1 bar on a tight sequence and Rankine came out of the weaves but went back in at the right spot, so we Q'd it.
Readers may recall that I am trying to get Skye's P-ADCH Bronze title, and just need Gambles and Pairs to finish it - and how cool is it that we Q'd both of those runs this weekend! We now need 2 more Pairs runs, and 3 more Gambles.

Rip ran his half of Pairs clean, but his partner forgot the course and directed her dog to an offcourse jump, so we did not Q this time.

In Sunday's Standard, I thought that Skye had run this clean. There were no discriminations this time :). As it turned out, he missed the AFrame contact, so no Q, but a better run than Saturday's.

Rip had a slow start in Standard - the 3rd obstacles was a tight turn into the weaves so he just felt slow. He got going though by the time we hit the Aframe. He jumped that contact and then knocked the bar two jumps afterward. He ran a really good dogwalk and finished the run by leaving the teeter early and getting called for that!

Snooker this time was a thinking man's game. The 7 point was different each time you attempted it. It was either a jump/weave combo, a jump/AFrame combo, or a jump/jump/tunnel combo. Whichever 7 successfully completed last in the opening was the one you had to take in the closing (if you did one).
There were only 3 reds, and I decided going for all 7s wouldnt work due to the time needed to complete them, so my plan was for 7+3+7. For Skye, we got through the opening OK, but then he hit the #2 bar in the closing, so it was a pretty short run.

Rip's plan was the same 7+3+7 and when we tried the second 7 in the opening (the jump/AFrame), Rip knocked the bar and then went partway up the frame and turned and came off it. I put him back on it for no points, but we got to do the closing. We got all the way through the 6 in the closing, and then I was approaching the AFrame for our 7pt obstacle when it briefly occurred to me that we didnt complete that successfully, so we were not supposed to take it in the close - that resulted in a whistle, so we got just 32 points and no Q. Funny thing though, had we completed the plan, those 47 points would have been another Super Q!

Finally, we ended the day with this crazy jumpers course. This was a memory test for sure, as I dont think I have ever had to walk a course so many times to remember it. I was fortunate to have a dog in both Performance and in Championship, as that meant I got 2 walkthroughs back to back!
Here is the course map - it looks like an army of jumps marching toward the corner!:

Skye ran it first and was almost clean except for knocking the #5 jump. I did a run-with and that caused my cross before #3 to be pretty late and Skye went wide. At least I remembered the course, which is not the case for a lot of competitors.

Rip liked this course and was running pretty fast. Except for a couple wide turns, he did this efficiently and was only 2 seconds off the top dogs. He Q'd this running 4 seconds faster than Skye did.

This means that Rip has gone 6/6 in his last 6 Master Jumpers runs! Of course, we still can't BUY a standard Q!

USDAA Cynosport Nationals experience

2011-10-23T09:23:00.001-06:00

Last week Katrina and I drove the travel trailer to Louisville Kentucky for the USDAA Nationals. We have qualified many times before, but never have attended. I actually liked the idea of an indoor nationals, compared to the outdoor Scottsdale location, since both Skye and Rip do not run well in the heat, and with Scottsdale, it could easily have been in the 90's. As it turned out, the weather was perfect in Kentucky - probably no warmer than about 75, and it only rained a brief time on one day.

We elected to stay at a KOA campground instead of camping onsite for two reasons - the KOA was about $12 a day less, and the Louisville expo center could not guarantee that we would have full hookups - it was first come, first serve, and since we weren't planning on arriving until Tuesday afternoon, I didn't want to chance it. The campground turned out to be very nice with lots of trees and nature trails for walks with the dogs. Well, it was nice until the masses and their kids showed up anyway - more on that later.

So we arrived barely before check-in closed on Tuesday since one of the 2 main bridges over the Ohio? river in Louisville is closed for repairs, which put us in a 1hr+ traffic jam. Checkin was uneventful and we had a chance to setup our crates. We had 4 crates since Ice-man came along for the ride even though he wasn't competing. The crating area was a jam packed building and everyone was nearly on top of each other. This is a lot different than when we went to Tulsa for the AKC Nationals two years ago and had a 10x10 stall. Fortunately, my teammates donated some of their 4'x6' crating space to us and we had enough room for all 4 crates.

Rip was entered in the DAM Team events, as well as the Grand Prix Quarterfinals. Skye was entered in PVP Team events, and the Performance Steeplechase Semi-Finals as well as Performance Grand Prix Semi-Finals. Skye's teammate was Baby, and Rip's teammates were Sharon Murphy & Reo and Art Malott & Mischief (Missy).

Wednesday
Wednesday started the events for us, and we only had Gamblers on the schedule. So, I had 2 runs, and Katrina only got 1 run with Baby. Here is the course map:

This was an interesting course. It presented 2 distance challenges, but only 28 seconds to run the course. For every second (or fraction) over time, you lost 3 points. For every second under time, you got 1 extra point, up to 10. The a-b-c/A-B-C challenge could be done for 10 points as a run-with (no distance) or do it as a distance challenge from the back side of the tunnel. So, handlers had to decide what to do - you could even skip the distance challenges altogether. This was a 1-2-3-5 scoring course, with the teeter worth 5.

For me, I got a little greedy, which is always the downfall of Gamblers. I tried the A-B-C-H distance challenge with Rip and he came out of the first set of 6 poles when I went behind the tunnel. I also tried the 1-2-3-4 distance with him and he turned back and backjumped #2. We did not end up with many points, as we were also 1.07 seconds over time which subtracted 6 points giving us only 13. My teammate Reo had an OK Gambler run for 24 points, but Art & Missy had a worse run than Rip and ended up with only 7 points, so we were near the bottom of the 175 total teams running - I think we were in 150th place or so.

For Skye, I had the same plan, but I intended on running with him at the a-b-c challenge. He did the first 6 poles, the jump, and missed the entry on the second set of 6 poles. I didn't remember, but I could have fixed it and earned the 10 points, but we just went on instead. I also incorporated the 1-2-3-4 challenge and Skye got it very nicely, but my timing was off and the buzzer went off when Skye was on the AFrame on the way out, so we lost 18 points by being way over time! Don't get greedy!!! Skye also ended up with just 13 points, but Baby had a good Gamblers run with 38 points to offset Skye's mess.

Thursday
We had Team Standard on Thursday as well as Perf GP Semi's for Skye. The Standard course wasn't too bad. Here is the map:

No real leadout was needed. Skye ran this first. Skye did look at the finish jump #19 after the AFrame, which I didn't expect, but I got him into the tunnel fine. We were going great but coming out of the tunnel before the #12 teeter, I didn't give him a very good line, and he fell off the side of the teeter. I put him back on it, but he missed the up contact in the process. We finished the rest of the course OK and ended up with just the 7 points worth of faults.

For Rip, he started out a little worried since the leash-runner came right up to me to get his leash. Rip hates having people behind him at the start and got concerned with ears pinned back and all. I got him going fine and he was slow over the AFrame (again worried because the judge was right next to the frame) but once in the tunnel, he shot out like a cannon! We got through the rest fine up until that darn tunnel to teeter section! I stood closer to the tunnel exit than I should have, to make sure he didn't offcourse the #16 jump but my position sent him right to the weaves. I screamed his name and he stopped just short of entering the poles and came over to the teeter and we continued on fine. He had a really fast dogwalk and we finished with just the 2 point refusal fault.

For our teams, Baby had a great run in Standard and was clean with no faults. This moved us up quite a bit in the standings - maybe 40th place out of 120?
Rip's teammates also got through without any 'E's though everyone had some faults. Still, we moved up to around 100th place, up from 150th.

Skye ran the PGP semi-finals but we ended up with an offcourse. I tried to do a rear-cross at a 180 turn and Skye looked at me like 'Huh?' and went right around the jump. In Grand Prix, you need to be clean, so I didn't bother to bring him back and fix it and just continued with the 'E'. They were not calling fault limits, so anyone that 'E'd a course still got to run it all the way through.
Here is the map from PGP. The problem jump was #13 and he went around the right side of it and then onto #14.

Friday
We had team Snooker on Friday, along with Grand Prix quarterfinals for Rip, and Perf Steeplechase semi-finals for Skye.

Here is the snooker map:

I was happy to see that we could only do 3 of the reds. It gives too much advantage to the really fast dogs if they can do all 4 reds, so this leveled the playing field a bit. The time allowed of 46 seconds isn't enough to get really aggressive with Skye - I was concerned that if I tried to go for too many points that we would end up with the buzzer while doing #7 in the close.
Also, since the #7 was jump/AF/jump, with that enticing tunnel under the frame, I elected to stay away from it. Both of my dogs would have a really good chance of grabbing an offcourse tunnel and ending our run early if I tried it.

For Skye, the conservative plan was 5+5+6 in the opening. Other than slipping and almost landing on the ground between the first 5 and the second 5, everything went great and we got all the way through the closing.

For Rip, the plan was for 6+6+6 in the opening. It went really smooth and we got all the way through #6 in the closing! When doing the 7 in the close, Rip took the jump but then shot into the tunnel under the frame (I knew that was a chance!)

For my teams, as it turned out, everyone but me had trouble with this course. Katrina and Baby got 1 point as Baby went behind her and took a jump she wasnt expecting. Rip's teammate Reo also got 1 point - they were going for 7's and after the first jump in the 7, Reo took the tunnel (see! Danger!). I didn't see Mischief run, but she at least got through #4 in the closing. Our team placements suffered after Snooker. I didn't tell Katrina that had she completed her plan, we would have been in 20th place, but instead were about 65th place.

Rip got to run the Grand Prix quarters next. This is the course:

The course was a little tricky. He went wide after #5 as though he didn't see the tunnel, but went in OK. The obvious tricky area was around 9 through 14. There were a lot of obstacles in close proximity with multiple direction changes. This one caught us, and after jump #10, I thought I had Rip's attention for the tunnel but he started up the dogwalk behind me. Whistle! I did get him and put him in the tunnel, and then we finished it up clean. He really ran nice, but you cant be getting offcourses! Unfortunately, Katrina was busy staring at the snooker ring next to this one and didn't watch us or film us.

At the end of the day, around 5:30pm, Skye got to run the Perf speed jumping semi's. The course was made for fast dogs and I knew this would be trouble for us as we can accel more at handling type courses. Here is the course:

We ran this clean without any bobbles and I was trying to push Skye to go fast. We ended up with a time about 36.1, but the real fast performance dogs were turning in times in the 30.x's. Once you factor the 15% average, the qualifier cutoff was around 35.1 so we didn't make it. I was still happy with his run - he did a great job.

Saturday
For us, Saturday was the last day of competition. Sunday is for team and GP finals which we were not in.
Saturday's team jumpers course was really challenging, and though I don't have the exact numbers, this course proved really tough for the bigger dogs with about 1/3 of the competitors getting an "E".
Here is the map:

The line from jump #3 to #4 caused many of the issues. Dog after dog took the #9 offcourse. The other biggest problem area was jump #16, as it was a slice and the dog's momentum tended to put them past the plane. Lots of dogs missed taking #16 altogether and shot into the tunnel.

I am proud to say that both Skye and Rip ran this well with just 1 bar down. I ran it conservatively for Rip, though I wish I had pushed a little more as it was a good course for him. I did a blind cross after the tunnel and he knocked #18.

For Skye, I got momentarily lost around 5-6-7, and this caused the #7 jump to get knocked. I did regain my senses and we continued on and ran the rest clean.

For my teams, Baby also ran this with just 1 bar knocked. This helped move us back up a bit in the standings and we finished in 43'rd place out of 120 teams. In the woulda-coulda-shoulda category, had Katrina finished her Snooker plan, we would have been in 16th place. They took just 12 Performance teams into the finals, so we still would not have made it, but we were really close and a better Gambler performance from me & Skye could have pushed us up even further. Ahhh if only!

On the other hand Rip's teammates did not fare well in this course. I saw Reo take the #14 triple after the #6 jump, so E for them. I didnt see Mischief's run, but she also earned up the 'E'. Surprisingly the two Es only moved our team placement marginally, and we ended up in 122nd place of 170. Not great, but not really near the bottom. Rip had the strongest performance on his team with no E's!
In the woulda-coulda-shoulda scenario for Rip's team - if the other 2 dogs performed exactly the same as Rip did, we would have ended up in 57th place.

Here's Rip's runs:

And Skye's:

Summary

In summary I would say our first USDAA Nationals was a successful event. I was not too nervous and I think my dogs ran really well.
Rip and Skye both hit every single contact! Other than Gamblers, they had perfect weave performances, and both dogs only knocked 1 bar (Rip knocked the start bar for snooker but it didnt count for anything :)

Next year, USDAA Nationals is right near home in Denver, outdoors in October. This can be risky - it could easily be cold with some snow, but I am planning on attending and deal with what nature brings us!

Three dogs, three rings, three days!

2011-09-25T00:42:00.000-06:00

Last weekend I went to the FRAAD AKC show at the Castle Rock fairgrounds. It's a 3 day show and on Saturday and Sunday, there are 3 rings with 3 judges. Lots of people and lots of conflicts with all the rings. The fact that two rings are indoors and one is outdoors, out of view from the indoor rings, really doesn't help.

I got to run Baby for my wife as well this weekend since she had to attend a Nosework instructor event in Denver. Baby moved to Preferred this year when she turned 10, and she hasn't done a lot of AKC, so going into this show, she still needed 3 Double Qs (after Katrina just got her 3 Double Qs a week ago) to qualify for the AKC Nationals for next year. With only 2 months left in the qualifying period, the pressure was on to help out with those Double Qs. As it turned out, Baby was rockin the house and ran 6 awesome runs, getting ALL THREE of those last Double Qs!

As for my dogs, I am really pleased with how they did.

Skye had a smoking weekend too, and ended up going 7 for 10, also getting 2 Double Qs himself!
We ran FAST all three days as well as our first official T2B class on Saturday. Skye managed to get one of the FAST send's - distance work isn't our strong suit!
His only other NQ run was a Standard course where he missed the dogwalk contact. The dogwalk was the 2nd to last obstacle and he just jumped it and went over the finish jump. That was his only missed contact of the weekend.
I am working to qualify Skye for AKC Nationals too - he now has plenty of Double Qs (you need 6 in the qualifying period) and of the 400 points required, we now have 393! I looked at my records and we didn't do as many AKC shows this year as in years past. With this show, we have now attended just 8 AKC shows for the year, but Skye's consistency has gone up so we almost have those points already. I looked at his averages and he's getting an avg of 10.7 points per JWW run, and 17.5 points per STD. So, I need just one more JWW Q to be all wrapped up.

As for Rip, he had a lot of really great runs this weekend. He only ended up with 3 of 10 Qs, but he was really close on a few of those.
He got two Qs in Exc. B JWW, and that now gives us 7 JWW Qs. This is a huge accomplishment considering how he used to knock a bar in almost every jumpers run. He has also been running really fast and has greatly improved his speed in the weaves. On Sunday, he ran an Exc. JWW course in 23.5 seconds.
Also on Sunday, Rip ran a fabulous STD run but knocked the very last bar. He had slipped in the loose dirt and try as he may, he just didn't have enough to clear it. That run was done in just 38 seconds.
One of his STD runs had a bad approach to the dogwalk that I didn't manage enough, and he hit one stride on the up ramp and continued off the side of it. In his other NQ'd Standard run, I made a handling error by calling Rip off a jump before he took it - I was worried about the offcourse tunnel after the jump so I gave him a turn cue too soon - but kudos to Rip for coming off that jump! Then he took an offcourse jump out of a tunnel because I assumed he would turn towards me when exiting the tunnel - never assume!
Rip also got to run 3 FAST courses and he also Q'd the very same course that Skye Q'd. The other two were close but no-go, and in Friday's, he actually got the send bonus but the buzzer went while we were trying it. In his first T2B course, he ran great with just 1 bar down
So Rip hit every single contact that he was given an opportunity to hit. Yes!!

I've put a video of some of Rip's runs together here:

ADCH or MACH, what's tougher to get?

2011-09-13T00:24:00.001-06:00

So Nicki at Borderblog asked a question on one of my posts, since I do both USDAA and AKC agility, what is tougher to earn - USDAA's ADCH championship, or AKC's MACH championship.

From the engineer in me, the answer is the MACH, since it requires more Q's:

ADCH = 5 Standard + 5 Jumpers + 5 Gamblers + 5 Snooker (3 superQs) + 5 Pairs + 5 Tournament (2 GP + 2 Steeplechase + 1 Team)

MACH = 20 Double Q's (20 Standard + 20 JWW on the same day) + 750 points.

However, I really don't think it's that simple.

First, an interesting tidbit about my dog Skye - he earned his MACH in July '10, and less than 2 months later, he earned his ADCH (in Performance, which is actually called PDCH). In Colorado, we have about twice as many AKC shows as we have USDAA shows, so then in theory, the MACH was tougher to get because we had many more tries at it.

Skye is a medium fast dog, which helps him be more consistent. In AKC, the Double Q requires consistency, but you can't be real slow and consistent or you will earn your Double Q's far faster than the 750 speed points. When Skye got his MACH, he had about 800 speed points, so the requirements tracked along pretty equally for us. I don't have any stats on how many agility days of competition it took us to put 20 Double Qs together, but I do know that we had about 28 total Standard Q's, so only 8 times we got a Standard Q and did not get a JWW Q to go along with it. We Q JWW more often than Standard, and as of right now, Skye has 43 total Standard Qs and 55 total JWW Qs (and 11 Double Qs toward the next MACH)

Now, a super fast dog may earn lots of speed points when they are clean, but at lightning speed, they are far more likely to end up offcourse. It can be a real challenge for a super fast dog to get a double Q!

So, where consistency pays dividends in AKC, it's not so much a requirement in USDAA.

There is no requirement that you need to get multiple Qs in a day for USDAA. Also, in some of the events you MUST beat the competition in order to Q, especially in Snooker, so you tend to push a bit harder.

The 5 Standard and 5 Jumper Qs that you need are stand-alone - ie earn them when you can, and on your own as long as you are under standard course time.

In Gamblers, you need a dog that is trained to work away from the handler. This can be a big challenge for small dogs, who tend not to excel at distance challenges, and for some big dogs too. Skye is a 'clingy' dog who doesnt like to work away from me, so getting 5 Gamble Qs was tough for us, and in fact, to complete our PDCH, we were waiting on that last Gamble.

In Pairs, it's required that both you and your partner get through your half of the course without going offcourse. You are allowed to be 'sloppy' and drop bars, miss contacts, re-do weaves, etc. as long as you are fast enough to overcome the penalty points that are added to your time when you are not clean. You also must have 5 different pairs partners, so its the luck of the draw!

Now Snooker is a strategy game that gives a lot of people fits. You have to make a plan that will give you at least 37 points, and for 3 of the 5 Qs you need, you must place in the top 15% of the class. This means that you will often be trying for many more than 37 points, and you are increasing your chances of failure to get those points! If you compete in an area with very skilled, fast competitors, you will definitely have your work cut out to beat them and be in the top 15%. Snooker requires you to be able to run past obstacles without taking them, and generally run around with a course that doesnt make a lot of sense to the dog.

For Skye, since he is a 'clingy' boy, Snooker is easier for us - he is not looking to take other obstacles other than what I am indicating. We have more USDAA Q's in Snooker than in anything else, and about half of our Qs are Super Qs (the Performance classes are smaller, so its easier than the Championship classes)

Finally, you need what USDAA calls Tournament Qs.

You need to get 2 Grand Prix Q's, which are essentially Standard without a table. You have to run clean in these and you dont need to worry about your competition.

You also need to get 2 Steeplechase Q's, which is a speed course with an AFrame and Weaves, one of which you will do twice, along with jumps, tunnels and the broad jump. In Steeplechase, you are allowed to be 'sloppy' again, and drop bars and miss contacts as long as you are fast enough with the penalty points. You must again beat your competition to Q - the top 3 dogs' times are averaged together, and then 25% more time is added to that total to come up with the cutoff time for a Q. A moderately fast dog can get a Q as long as they run clean.

You also need 1 DAM Team Q, which is a team of 3 dogs (2 dogs for Performance) who compete individually for points. Those points are added together using some multiplier formulas. The last event of Team is the Relay race. As long as your teammates do not go offcourse, everything is scored with time+faults. An offcourse is an E, and gets you zero points for that event. Consistency does pay off in the Team events.

Ahhhh, so what is the final answer to the question?

I think an ADCH is Tougher to get for the average dog, as it requires many more skills than just the consistency of AKC. In USDAA, you have to run faster, be able to work at a distance, be able to run past obstacles, be able to pair with other people, and be able to come up with your own strategic course in Gamblers and Snooker.

The courses in USDAA also are often more challenging than AKC, with sharper jump angles and such.

Owners of super fast dogs will probably say that a MACH is tougher, because that consistency doesn't come easy, and they can get the USDAA Q's here and there, as well as not having to be clean for many of them.

So, opinions anyone? That's my take on it!

Laramie USDAA for Skye and Rip

2011-08-31T15:13:00.000-06:00

We took the travel trailer up to Laramie WY again this year for their annual USDAA trial. This show always runs a couple Masters classes on Friday afternoon, which works out fine since we have a 3.5 hour drive up, so we wouldn't be able to drive up on Saturday morning anyway. The trip up was pretty uneventful, unlike Jackie's trip! We haul in what seems like half the household, with our 4 dogs and 4 wire crates and 4 fans, chairs, coolers, bedding, etc. This is a nice relaxing trial as it's only 1 ring, so no conflicts, and the arena is out in the country surrounded only by University of Wyoming agriculture buildings and hundreds of sheep (Hellllooooo Border Collies!). The only real downside here is the flies. Lots of flies. Flies crawling on you all the time.

Here are some of Rip's videos. (I am having some computer trouble so havent been able to compile Skye's videos yet)

So we started the day with Gamblers, and I didn't do it right for either dog. I dont have the map, but it was seemingly straightforward - take a jump and send to a U shaped tunnel, and upon tunnel exit, pass back between the jump and the tunnel and take a distance teeter, and finish with a jump. It really didnt look very difficult. I started the gamble with both dogs on my left - worked great for Rip, but Skye took the wrong end of the tunnel. Skye then got the rest of the gamble just fine. Rip came out of the tunnel and flew back over the starting jump.

Next we did Steeplechase. Rip had a pretty nice run but he did miss his contact on the first pass of the AFrame and then ended up knocking a bar, so we did not make it into round 2. His time was pretty good at 33 seconds. Skye had a decent, clean run, though he was a bit slow due to the heat. I think he ran it in 39 seconds - so Rip was 6 seconds ahead of him!

The last of Friday's runs was Snooker. Rip did well - we were going for 5-6-7-6 in the opening but he hit the third Red jump, so we went to the other and ended up with 5-6-7 opening, and in the closing it was going great, but Rip knocked a bar in the #6 combo so our 35 points wasnt enough points to Q. Skye ran the course great doing the 5-6-7-6 opening and went all the way through the closing, so he ended up with another Super Q! I've pretty much found that I need to run the same plan with both dogs or I will get mixed up.

Saturday started with Standard - Skye had a great run and got 1st place in his small group of P3 dogs!
I've really been wanting to get Rip out of Advanced Standard - it seems like we have had wayyyyy to many tries at getting Q's in Adv. Std without success - we only had 1 Q going into the show. So, maybe trying too hard, or caring too much factors into the NQ's as well - there is definitely something to be said about that as when you try to run more cautious, you DO end up making mistakes.
So here we go - the run is going great and Rip sticks his dogwalk contact nicely. We near the end and I am impatient and pull him off a jump before the AFrame - no problem though as no refusals are called on jumps, so I put him back over it, and then he launches his AFrame contact. Ugh. Followed by hitting the bar on the jump after the frame. There goes try #1.

Next came Grand Prix - this felt like a long course and the wheeling showed it as 194 yards. Yikes! It had a couple tricky spots for a dog like Rip who loves to suck to tunnels.
Rip ran that course like a champ and ignored those offcourses and got a Q! He took about 5th place. There were not a lot of dogs that qualified on that longass course.
Skye then ran the course and he also did great - he ran it in about the same amount of time Rip did and got a Q & 2nd place! Both dogs got their first Grand Prix/Perf Grand Prix Q's for next year's qualification period!

Last for Saturday was Jumpers. This was a pretty tricky course with some weird angles and a box with a 270 and offcourse potential. Rip ended up getting caught by the offcourse after jump #5, and Skye was pretty slow but dropped a bar, so neither dog got a Jumpers Q this time around.

Sunday had Standard, Pairs, Round2 of Steeplechase and a bonus round of Snooker.

As it turned out, Sunday was Rip's day! I tried not to overthink his Standard run and just run it. Everything went great and we got a freakin Standard Q baby! The dogwalk was the 2nd to last obstacle and the course put you a little behind on it, and I must have told him to "Touch!" while he was on the up-ramp! Good boy stuck that contact!

Skye ran really well and I thought we had Q'd the P3 Standard, but then I found out after that he actually missed his dogwalk contact. It was a popular fault because of the way the course was designed.

We ran Pairs - Rip was paired with Julie & Rift and we did great. Rift is Ice's brother. This was our second try together and this time our only fault was a bar that Rip knocked, but our time was plenty fast to get the Q. This was also Rip's Master Pairs title!

Skye ran pairs with my wife & Baby. Unfortunately Katrina didnt notice that Baby missed the weave entry so when she continued to the next obstacle, she was whistled. Last time we paired, it was me who messed it up, and this was her turn.
The bummer is, I am trying to get Skye's PDCH-Bronze title, and all we need are Gambler and Pairs legs, and we got neither at this show.

Skye got to play in Round 2 of P-Steeplechase. He was running pretty slow, so I didn't expect too much, but he did run clean. Shar & Tar'n ran after us and they had a bobble at the weave entry, but even with that, they still ended up 1.5 secs ahead, so Skye got 2nd place. Still good for $8 :)

Finally we got to play the bonus Snooker. As Rip still needs all his Super Qs, I tend to try and come up with a high point plan that will give us a chance. He's not the fastest dog, so I usually can't go for all 7's and make it through the closing, but again we had the option of 4 reds and I was going for 7-7-6-3 I believe. Rip was actually going for something different though! I did a long leadout and planned to call him over a red and through the tunnels so we could take the teeter in the back. Rip was coming to me and I flinched and he veered into the #3 tunnel. So, plan change, we did #3, then did the 7, then 6, and instead of #3 as planned, Rip did the #2 tunnel, but that was OK, we continued through the close. The buzzer went while the #7 teeter was tipping down, so we didnt get those points. No Super Q, but we did get the regular Q anyway.

For Skye, I ran a 7-7-6 opening and we got through the closing. The 16" & 22" groups got combined in performance and 1 super Q was given out - it went to my wife & Baby who did 4 reds.

All in all a very successful trial. So glad to get an Advanced Standard leg for Rip, and also really glad to get each dog a Grand Prix Q!

I am not happy about how many bars Rip knocked this weekend. Some were probably my fault, and some were his fault. I may have to go back to staggering his jump heights in practice again - I will see after this weekend's 3-day USDAA show that is going to be at the same nice indoor soccer facility where the RM Regional was held. I also have to continue my work on contacts for both dogs. Skye did really well only missing 1 dogwalk contact all weekend. Rip did well on his dogwalks, hitting them all, but did miss a couple AFrames. We are not quite there yet!

Skye and Rip do AKC at Latigo, July 2011

2011-07-28T00:53:00.000-06:00

This past weekend was a 2 day local trial at the Latigo Trails facility, which is the one only 10 minutes from home.

The judge, Terry Culley, had some really fun and challenging courses. Sometimes AKC courses seem considerably easier than USDAA, but that was not the case this weekend, especially on Saturday where only 5 dogs out of about 30 in the Exc. 20B group Q'd the standard course. That was followed up by only 9 dogs Q'ing the the Exc 20B JWW course!

Skye actually managed to get a Double Q on Saturday with a 3rd in Std and a 6th in JWW!

Rip had a really nice fast Std run in Exc-A, but he "bunny hopped" his teeter and got called (rightfully so!) - I think he may have thought it was the dogwalk. His time was faster than the 1st place dog in 20B which is cool.

I then had a first-ever with Rip in JWW - and not a good first either. He got spooked by the judge and wouldn't run the course. He took the 2nd jump and was looking at the judge who was standing near jump #3 and veered off, refusing to go anywhere near #3 and going away from me, just really freaked for some reason. I suppose the reason is he is a border collie, and sometimes they freak out! So I left after 2 jumps with Rip, pretty disappointed that we didnt get to try the course.

On Sunday, neither dog had a really good Standard run. I decided to push Skye a little, and he knocked the top bar of the triple and then came out of the weaves at about pole 4 after the triple, in order to catch up to me! He then missed both his AF and DW contacts. Jeeze.
For Rip, because of the bad experience in JWW on Saturday, I decided to "run with" from the start to keep it a positive experience - I didnt want any repeat of him being scared. Normally I would have taken a small leadout and front crossed between #3 & 4, but instead I did a rear cross, and Rip didnt cross tight and took an offcourse, skipping the triple and heading into the weaves. We continued and he then missed his AF contact as well. I made him hold his DW. I MUST remember to hold criteria on both dogs - gotta quit letting them get away with missing these contacts as they have really solid 2O2O in practice.

In JWW, both dogs ran really well. Skye got a Q & 8th place - about 50% of dogs Q'd the JWW course in the 20B group. Rip had a great run but did drop 1 bar as I decelerated too soon. He ran it 1.5 seconds faster than Skye did.

Here are some of Skye and Rip's runs:

Finally, I got to run Xena, a neat fast Aussie owned by Lana, as Lana had pulled a leg muscle on Saturday and couldnt run. This was my first time running Xena, though she is in class with Skye so she knows me.

Xena ran great for me. We took 1st in Open Standard and earned her Open Std Title! I then ran her in Open JWW and she also got 1st & Q'd, though we did have a little refusal bobble in that one.

Here is Xena's Standard run:

RM Regional - one more video

2011-07-11T13:58:00.000-06:00

I was able to get Rip's Team Relay from Alan Tay (Powerpups) which is great since we had video recording issues.

Mary Ellen & Maizy had 1 bar, Rufus popped his weaves - and Susan says he NEVER does that, and then Rip had 1 bar, but no offcourse!
Wow look at that Maizy go!

Our USDAA Rocky Mountain Regional Report

2011-07-08T00:23:00.002-06:00

Last weekend I attended the RM Regional, held at an awesome indoor soccer facility in Lakewood, Colorado - it's just west of Denver. The turf surface is really nice and the building is huge with plenty of crating space. On the downside, the building is not climate controlled except for some ventilation fans, and the weekend was up near 100 degrees, so it was quite steamy in there.

I had entered DAM/PVP team events with Rip and Skye, as well as the Regional Steeplechase & Grand Prix events. I passed on the IHC classes and the local Grand Prix to save some money.

Overall, we did really well. In DAM team, Rip's teammates were Mary Ellen Barry & her BC Maizy and Susan Scariot & her Papillon Rufus. They were really great and we ended up having a very successful team, considering nobody knew each other before we got there! Maizy was the top 22" dog in Team for the weekend, and Rufus scored really high. Rip did well too - no offcourses for us and our team ended up in 5th place overall, out of 30 very competitive teams.
My only regret is in Rip's snooker course. I had run the course with Skye and accumulated 53 points with a pretty flowing plan. I wanted to run the same plan with Rip, but didn't anticipate that he would head for an offcourse tunnel, so we only ended up with 9 points. Had I been able to execute the same plan with Rip, our team would have finished in 2nd - woulda, coulda, shoulda!

In this Gamblers run, there was a 3 jump sequence that had to be done as a threadle for 5 points in a 1235 scoring system. This was the only 5 point obstacle. Rip did it successfully in both the opening and in the closing (double points). There were only 3 other 22" dogs that did it in the opening - not sure how many did in the close. We had 42 points - 1st place was 45 points.

Skye & I were teamed with my wife & Baby. I turned out to be the weak link on our team unfortunately. Skye had an offcourse in Standard, at the tunnel / dogwalk discrimination. Looking back at the video, I can see that I greatly contributed to that offcourse. Bummer. Our Gamblers was good, with Skye getting 1st in 22" performance, and our Jumpers and Snooker were good too - Skye also had 1st in Snooker. We were in 6th place, 'above the line', going into the relay. Alas... Skye found another tunnel to take that wasn't part of the course and we NQ'd our side of the relay. Baby-dog was perfect all weekend, putting up really nice scores all around, but with Skye getting 2 offcourses, we ended up in 7th, just below the Q line. It didnt really matter as we had already Q'd for Nationals, but still!!

Steeplechase round 1 had 2 sets of weaves - this turned out to be Rip's downfall. His weaves this weekend were pretty slow with the heat, and having to do 2 sets just cost too much time. Rip ran clean, but was just too slow to make it into round 2.
Skye's Perf-Steeplechase was good, though he knocked the last bar. We just made it into round 2 as the last seed.

In Grand Prix, Skye already had a bye into round 2, so it was more or less practice. I didn't monitor contacts and Skye missed both his DW and his AF, but otherwise had a good run.
Rip ran pretty well except in one spot where I was doing a wrap/rear cross on a jump and he didn't read my motion and turned the wrong way and knocked the bar. I am bummed that we didn't get that run on tape so I could see what I did.

So, Rip did not get to play in Round 2 of either Steeplechase or Grand Prix - no bye's for him!
Skye did play in both Round 2's. He took I think 3rd in Perf Steeplechase. I thought his time was not fast enough for a bye, as I believe we got combined with the 16" group, but then on Sunday the trial sec told me I DID get a bye for Steeplechase, so if that is the case, then cool beans!
The last run for us was Perf Grand Prix, and though Skye was not all that fast due to the 99 degree heat, he did run it clean for 2nd place and a semi-final bye!

I would really like to do a Regional where I don't have to run in 100 degree heat. The only regionals I have done have been local and really hot, which makes my dogs really slow. Maybe next year I will investigate doing one somewhere else, either in a climate controlled place, or at a cooler time of year. We shall see.

USDAA in the forest!

2011-06-30T11:22:00.002-06:00

This was a really weird trial for us, with as many good moments as bad. It's set at a nice park among tall pines with no view of any street. It's also only 25 minutes from home.

I was running Skye and Rip, and also ended up running Baby for Katrina as she had a leg muscle that didn't feel right and didn't want to chance it after last year's hamstring pull. That amounted to about 15 runs for the weekend.

Lets review Rip's runs first. He had a decent weekend, even though we still manage to find a way to NQ every Advanced Standard run we do. We have 1 Q in the last 11 attempts at Advanced Standard!
We started the weekend off on a good note, with a Q in Master Gamblers. He did a nice job on the send over two jumps to a tunnel, then back over two jumps to finish. That's his 4th Master Gamblers Q - I dont think gamblers will be our issue like it was for Skye!

His Saturday Standard run was really slow - like I didn't know what was wrong with him slow - and later I found out that he really needed to potty, so bad dad on me. He ended up running around the chute, so I put him back in, and then I didn't cross and caused a wrong end of the tunnel.
He ran nicely in Steeplechase round 1, but he did knock 2 bars, so that kept us out of round 2.

He ran pairs with Amy & Nes, and we squeaked in with a Q. Nes is consistent but slow, so we barely made time. This was also our 4th Master Pairs Q.

To save some money, we did not run Grand Prix, as we already have our 2 Qs for nationals.
On Sunday, we started with Standard and had a good run going - then he popped out of the weaves at pole 10. Damn! That was our fault for this try.
Next up we ran his first ever Master Jumpers course. Rip did a very nice job and kept all the bars up for a Q. Good boy!

We then had Snooker, which was an interesting setup. The 7pt combo was three tunnels set far apart, and you had to run by jumps to get there.
Because Rip loves tunnels, I thought this would be a good course for us to try for all 7s. I figured I could tell him to 'go tunnel' and he wouldn't care about the offcourse jump options. I was right - he did a great job and never looked at the jumps, but with the 90 degree+ heat, he wasn't running all that fast, and we got through 6 in the closing, and then the #7 in the closing wasn't the tunnels, but a 3 jump combo instead.

Rip got up to the 2nd jump of #7 in the close when the buzzer went. Only 1 dog completed all 7s and got through the close, so this *woulda* been a super Q for us. Instead it was a regular Q.

Rip finished the day by trying the IHC jumpers course. Again he was running pretty slow, and he did a good job with only 1 refusal on the course. No offcourses.

Now Skye's turn...
On Saturday, for whatever reason, Skye popped out of the weaves at pole 10 five different times. I cant even remember the last time he popped out prior to this trial. He did this 3 times in a row in Gamblers to start off the weekend. He also popped in Perf. Steeplechase and Pairs. I was
pretty frustrated with him and those thoughts of 'retirement' crept back in. I figured I would just have to wait and see what the rest of the weekend brought and decide what to do later. Fortunately, he did not pop out in any run on Sunday.

So, Skye managed to only get 3 Qs this weekend, two in Standard - both 1st place in pretty small classes, and he also Q'd the IHC Jumpers course.

The days were pretty hot, which tends to affect Skye's performance - he is definitely a lot slower in the heat.
In Gamblers, we had an alltime low number of points - since he kept missing those weaves. We got 2 whole points, and no distance challenge - but my heart was not in that part anyway after the bad weaves.
In P-Steeplechase round 1, he knocked the broad jump and the weave popout that we did fix. No Q, but we made it to round 2 anyway.

In pairs, I had to re-do the weaves again, and then I forgot the course so directed him over an offcourse jump.
The Snooker run wasn't bad, though he didn't listen and took an offcourse jump after #5 in the closing, so we had 36 points and no Q!
His Jumpers run was nice except that he uncharacteristicly knocked 2 bars.
His round 2 of P-Steeplechase was pretty nice, right up to the point where he skipped the broad jump. I didn't go back and fix it.

Skye ran pretty slow in his IHC Jumpers course, which I am sure contributed to us being able to Q it. The course had a threadle and push around challenge as well as some interesting angles.

On a good note, according to the USDAA website, those 2 Standard Qs for Skye this weekend give him 100 Qs for Lifetime Achievement standings.
That also leaves us with needing 5 pairs and 5 gambles for our PADCH-Bronze.

And finally, I ran Baby this weekend...
Baby ran really well for me with just 2 exceptions.
I ran her in Perf Grand Prix and got 1st place and another bye certificate for Katrina. We ran P-Steeplechase and she had a good run for 2nd place in round 1, and then she followed that up by getting 1st in round 2 on Sunday!
She was sassy in Gamblers, so she did not get the gamble as she was barking at me instead. Her only other issue was in Saturday's Standard course when she was looking around for mom, and skipped the 2nd jump, then as the course turned back to where Katrina was filming, Baby went over for a quick visit - she also didnt want to lay down on the table, the little stinker!
Katrina did run her in Pairs for the 10 obstacles, while I ran Skye (see above).
She Q'd Jumpers, Snooker, Standard and IHC Jumpers. Sunday's Standard run was great, good for 1st, especially considering her foolishness on Saturday. All in all, a good time running Baby-dog!
Standard:

Grand Prix

Steeplechase Rd2

Double Q's and the Meeks!

2011-06-15T00:37:00.001-06:00

This past weekend we competed at the 3 day FRAAD AKC trial. This is a fun trial because it's one of our few shows that includes the FAST class. It was 3 rings, with 2 indoors and 1 outdoor, which can make for some conflicts, but it wasn't really an issue for us.

We had a really successful show, except for that darn FAST class! I also got to run Meeker - which I will talk about later.

Friday
Rip put together three really nice runs. He is in Exc. A for STD and Exc. B for JWW. His standard run was great - he ran fast, motivated and listened really well. Unfortunately we knocked the panel jump so no Q, but still a great run with a time that would have been 3rd place in the Exc B class of 50+ dogs.
He also ran a really fast JWW run - it was his kind of course with a lot of areas to use his stride. I called too early for a wrap jump and made him knock the jump before it though, so no Q's, but very happy with the runs. Rip ran both STD and JWW more than 3 seconds faster than Skye did. I am starting to see some of his speed actually come out on course.
We ran Open FAST at the end of the day and he got the Q to earn our Open FAST title! That puts us in Excellent for all classes, yeah!

Skye continued his good consistent running on Friday and earned us another Double Q - this is the 5th one needed to qualify for Nationals.

Rip STD

Rip JWW

Saturday
Rip put it together and got Q's in both Exc A STD and in Exc JWW! His first 'virtual' double Q! We still need 1 more Exc A qualifier to get into B for Standard. He was just a touch behind Skye in JWW, and about 1.5 seconds ahead of Skye in STD.

Skye ran Saturday's courses great too and earned yet another Double Q - the last one we needed for Nationals. We still need a little over 100 points more, but that should not be an issue.
In the JWW course on Saturday, I believe I put 7 front crosses in for Skye to keep him running motivated and it worked, putting him just ahead of Rip.
The Standard course had a tunnel under the AFrame that caused a lot of dogs to turn the wrong way upon exiting (including Rip) so I ran and FrontCrossed for Skye which turned him correctly. This course also had a weird intentional back-jump combination, where obstacle 15 & 16 were the same jump - take it one way for 15, turn around and take it the other way for 16. We did it without issue.

Skye JWW

Rip STD

Skye STD

Sunday
Finally, Skye was going for the perfect double Q weekend after getting the Q in JWW. So close! After the dogwalk, we were to wrap a jump and go back to a tunnel under the dogwalk - but Skye had spotted a different jump and headed in a direction to cut me off before the jump - I pushed back to the correct jump and told him to wrap but his approach was off and he knocked the bar. The rest of the run was great.

Rip ran two really nice runs again, with 1 mistake in each. In JWW, I got momentarily lost and he saved my butt when I realized I was about to pull him off the correct jump, but then I rushed a front cross and cut into his path, causing him to knock the 2nd to last bar.
In Standard, I got out of position after bailing on a cross before the AFrame. This put me behind, causing me to rear a jump after the frame, and then rear into the weaves. He hit the weave entry but skipped a pole, so NQ.

FAST
The Excellent FAST courses this weekend all had the same theme - some kind of approach to a tunnel where you had to get the dog into the difficult end. Skye and I failed the challenge all 3 times - ugh!!
Rip had his first 2 tries at Excellent FAST but did not get the Q's. Sunday's was as close as you can get without actually Qing it - he got the distance piece, but turned around on the AFrame after a bad approach. I stood for a moment trying to remember if I could put him back on it, then the buzzer went and it took us 5 seconds to get over the finish jump, which put our points total at 59 - just 1 shy of qualifying!

"The Meeks"
On Saturday and Sunday I ran Meeker for one of our students, Liz, who was injured. Meeker is a big fun Aussie who jumps 24". I have run him in class before, and he stayed with us one time when Liz was on vacation, so we do have a little bond.
Meeker ran great for me, and we actually went 3/4, earning her a Double Q on Sunday. Our only NQ run was caused by Meeks hitting the triple (and knocking it flat!). He is such a good dog and runs well for others. He does already have his MACH 2, so he is definitely well trained.

Meeker STD

USDAA fun in Pueblo.

2011-05-18T01:09:00.002-06:00

Ah, the joy of May, the only month when we have back-to-back local USDAA trials.

This weekend, it was Pueblo's turn, and we had a great time in spite of the weather. Pueblo was unusually cool both days, more-so on Sunday, with a little rain and drizzle and just a bit of sunshine too. If you asked the dogs, they would tell you it was perfect!

Skye was again a superstar, getting a Q in everything he ran, except for one Gamblers course where the Q rate was about 10%.

He finished qualifying for the Nationals with another Grand Prix Q. Along the way, he also Q'd both of his Standard runs, Jumpers, Snooker, Gamblers, and Pairs. We scratched from a bonus Snooker run because it was very late in the day and it had started to rain.

The Snooker we did Q had a knocked bar in the opening, which kept us from getting another Super Q, but the run was still nice, and Skye hit 4 good AFrames in that run!

He also Q'd Perf. Steeplechase, getting 1st place in round 1 and 2nd place in round 2.

So now with Skye qualified in all 3 events for Nationals, I need to start planning on going. It seems Katrina will likely not go, in which case I need to come up with team(s) on my own.

Rip also had a very good weekend, even though Standard Q's still elude us.
Like Skye, he also managed to get his 2nd Grand Prix Q, so he is qualified in GP and Team for Nationals.
Rip finally managed to get another Steeplechase Q this weekend (our last was August last year). We seem to be consistently about 6 seconds slower than the fastest of fast dogs, which this weekend included Kim Terrill and Steeple, though his speed is improving.

Somehow I need to get Rip to be more confident on course and run like I have seen him run. His weaves were Really slow this weekend, probably 3-4 seconds a set. When you are up against dogs doing weaves in 2 seconds, and have to do this twice on course, you are pretty far behind!

Rip managed to get a Snooker Q, despite taking a jump I didnt plan on - our recovery skills were great in that run!

We also ran Pairs with Rio and we had a nice fast run for a Q.

Finally, at the end of the day Sunday, we ran Jumpers and Rip Q'd that one too, earning our Advanced Jumpers title - now we are in Masters for everything except Standard.
Darn Standard - our run on Saturday was great, with an AFrame contact fault. On Sunday, I made some handling choices that I would change if I could do it over. Sunday's standard run was pretty messy with numerous faults.

All in all, I was really happy with Rip's contacts. His AFrame is getting faster again, and he only missed 1 that I recall. He also never missed a weave entry and only popped out once!

Rip didnt feel well on Sunday, having stomach issues, so I am sure he didnt give 100%, but I really am going to try and work his confidence so that I can get him running faster on course. He worries too much, and gets concerned about the people around him, and the judge standing nearby. This contributes to him running with some fear, instead of being his happy goofy self.

Videos:
Rip Standard

Rip Steeplechase

Rip Pairs

Skye Standard

Skye Snooker

Skye Perf Grand Prix

What happened to Spring? or USDAA in Brighton.

2011-05-10T11:59:00.000-06:00

We attended the 2 day USDAA trial in Brighton this past weekend. We didn't go to this one last year, though I usually try to make it since we have so few USDAA's available. This time, we ended up with mid 80's to 90 degree temps in early May. You really never know this time of year - we have had ice on the grass at this trial too in years past, as well as microburst winds that like to come midday and destroy canopies.

So, with the high temps, I lowered my expectations for Skye and Rip, as neither of them do real well in the heat. Skye seems to run at about 1/2 speed - I know that is an exaggeration, but that's how it feels while we are out there.

It turned out to be a successful weekend overall, though neither of my boys managed to get a Standard Q this weekend.

We did pretty well in the tournament classes - Skye was one of the few Perf 22" dogs to run clean in Grand Prix so he got 1st & a bye certificate. Rip ran well in Grand Prix though I pulled him off a jump - we kept going and got whistled. I continued and got whistled again - apparently during the briefing that I missed, the judge decided to implement the rule that you leave after an offcourse. I at least did 5 or 6 more obstacles before leaving. How much time are we really saving at a local trial doing this for $22 runs? Maybe a couple minutes? Aggravating.

In Steeplechase, Skye ran clean except for 1 bar, but we still managed to get into round 2. Rip had a nice clean Steeplechase run, though a little slow due to the heat. We missed the cutoff for round 2 even though we were clean, thanks to 3 really fast dogs who set the cutoff time. In round 2, Skye had 1 fault - hitting the broad jump pretty hard, but finished for 3rd place.

Skye had issues with contacts this weekend - he missed a couple dogwalks in standard, missed quite a few AFrames as well throughout - costing us a Super Q in Snooker (though we dont need them), and costing us Standard runs.
Rip was 100% on contacts this weekend - awesome!

Each of them had a couple bars down, though the grass was thick in spots, and very slick in other spots, so it was hard for them to judge the footing. There were a number of handlers who took nasty falls, and a number of dogs sliding, hitting bars and uprights and getting a little hurt.

My finally tally was
2 Qs for Rip, a Master Gambler, and Advanced Jumper, out of 8 runs.
6 Qs for Skye, in Gamblers, Grand Prix, Pairs, Perf Steeplechase, Snooker, and Jumpers of 8 runs.

Skye is now qualified for nationals in Perf Steeplechase and Team and needs 1 more Grand Prix.
Rip is qualified in Team, but needs 1 more Grand Prix, and still needs 2 Steeplechase.

I did load a couple videos onto Youtube. I got a new HD video camera, so click the fullscreen link to check them out in 1080p High Definition!

Rip Jumpers:

Rip Snooker:
I mixed up Skye's plan with Rip's plan - we had a great run going, trying for 4 7's.

Skye Grand Prix:

Skye Jumpers:

We have another USDAA next weekend in Pueblo - I am hoping that its not going to be hot again!

Snow on April 26th!

2011-04-29T08:49:00.000-06:00

My anniversary is April 26th, and to celebrate, mother nature gave us snow! Of course, it was gone the next day, but the dogs had a great time in it. Here are a few pictures...

Video from MHGRC AKC show

2011-04-24T23:50:00.000-06:00

I posted these to my youtube account, but keep forgetting to put them here.

Skye and Rip's MHGRC AKC results

2011-04-15T00:16:00.003-06:00

We only played on Saturday and Sunday, and it was a very good show for us.

I did start the weekend off with a 'Doh!' experience in Rip's standard run. We are in Exc. A standard and ran with the tall dogs. The start was a U shaped tunnel to the dogwalk, but Rip managed to find the conveniently placed jump coming out of the tunnel instead. He stepped on the dogwalk and got in his 2-on-2-off position. I took him off the DW and then we went back on it to continue the course. Tweeet! went the judge's whistle, so oh well, no Q for us, just finish up the run. Tweeeeet!!! as we pass the next jump and chute and then I remember, 'Tweet' in AKC means you have violated the 4-paw rule and must leave immediately! Oops. I did apologize to the judge after, mentioning that I ran USDAA the prior weekend which doesnt make you leave when you hear the whistle.

Skye then ran Standard and had a really nice run which was good for 4th place out of the 66 20" B dogs!

Rip is now in Exc. B JWW, so we were looking to get our first ever MACH points, and he did not disappoint! Rip ran the course before Skye on both days and showed big-brother how it's done! He was clean with 14 MACH points on Saturday!

Skye then got to run and though he was about 1/10th of a second behind Rip's time, Skye also was clean for 14 MACH points and a Double Q - yeah!

On Sunday, we started with JWW, and Rip was the 3rd dog on the line for the day. He did really well and ran clean again for 10 more MACH points and his 2nd clean Exc. B JWW! Good boy keeping all those bars up!

Skye ran it after, and I pushed him trying to beat Rip's time, but when all was done, Skye finished clean but Rip still had him beat by 2/10ths of a second.

In Standard, Skye went first. There was one part of the course where the dog had to take the non-obvious side of the tunnel. This skill has haunted me and Skye for ages. I decided to handle it with a call over the jump to bring him to me, and release him into the correct end of the tunnel. The call worked - he looked at me, and then as I indicated, he shot over to the wrong end. I knew better, but worth a try right?!

Rip then ran Standard and had a great run. He flew over the aframe and through the weaves. He did miss his dogwalk contact because I was behind him, but he ran really fast and his time would have been good for 4th place in the Exc. B 20" group.
All in all, a really good weekend.

I will post some video when I get the runs in the next day or so.

Greg & Skyeboy & Rippers

Fire Alarm Practice aka USDAA Loveland

2011-04-05T00:41:00.000-06:00

We went to the annual USDAA trial in Loveland again this year and were greeted by a warm (81 degrees) windy Saturday followed by a coldfront with snow on Sunday.
Maybe 15 minutes into the trial, Ice was running Gamblers when the fire alarms went off in the arena. Katrina ended up finishing the run as the buzzer had gone off signaling time to do the gamble, and Ice got it, and we grabbed the dogs and went outside with everyone. Seems a burned batch of popcorn at the concession stand was the culprit.
If that wasn't "fun" enough, on Sunday morning at the hotel, at about 6:50am, I had taken Skye and Rip out to the truck so that we could pack up the room. While I was out there, the fire alarms went off at the hotel! I was really glad that my timing was such that my dogs didnt have to hear that (Rip would have absolutely FREAKED I am sure). However, my cardkey would not let me back into the room, so Katrina came out on her own with Baby and Ice shortly after - they were not too happy, but we were at least the closest hotel room to the exit.

So, aside from that, we had a really successful showing at the trial.

Rip managed to get his first Advanced Standard Q, along with a coveted Grand Prix Q, a Master Gamblers Q and a Master Snooker Q! He would have had a Steeplechase Q as well if I didnt push him and cause a jumped AF contact.

Skye got two Q's in P3 Standard, a Q in P3 Pairs, a Q in P3 Jumpers and another Super Q in Snooker.

Rip knocked only 2 bars this weekend - one in our first run, an Adv. Standard where you had to call for the AF/Tunnel discrimination and I must have called over the bar. The other bar came in his last run, Adv. Jumpers when he hit the top of the triple. He hit all contacts except when I pushed too much in Steeplechase.
Rip's weave speed is really hit or miss. I will be doing much more weave practice for speed. I am waiting for him to 'click' with his footwork - that is what is keeping his speed down, as he is not consistent with footwork and sometimes appears to be stumbling over himself through the weaves. He *can* single-step them - I've seen it in practice and on rare occasion in competition.

Skye ran very well for the most part, and though our Q's were almost always 1st places, I know he was not giving me all the speed he can. He had a 'duh' moment in Gamblers when I attempted to send him to a jump/tunnel and he veered off to the right. Whaa? Not sure what he thought I was saying. In his Standard run on Saturday, he bashed his chin when jumping up on the table. It makes me cringe a bit watching the video, though he finished the run with a Q & 2nd?!?. The following run was Grand Prix and he fell off the dogwalk at the start of the downplank, so that wasnt so good. We still need 2 Grand Prix legs for Nationals.

Here are some of the videos - the camera was acting up this weekend, so I dont have video of some runs, and some I just dont feel like posting :)

Rip
Rip did great in his first ever Master Snooker run - only 1 point away from a Super Q. I had 7 seconds left and could have gone for the 4th red (easy to say in hindsight!)

Advanced Jumpers - pretty good run with 1 bar. I thought it ran well up till the last couple jumps that went wide.

Master Gamblers - a Q, though slow in the weaves and he popped his first set of poles.

Adv. Standard - this is the Q run - I made him stick his contacts. Pretty good run on a very long course.

Adv. Standard - the NQ due to the bar before discrimination. I was happy with this run.

Skye

Standard - Q and 1st place

Snooker - Super Q and 1st place. Same plan I ran for Rip, though Rip did it 3 seconds faster.

Jumpers - Q and 1st place

Standard - Q and 2nd place. This is the run where he smashed his face on the table. You've been warned ;)

Pairs - Q and 2nd I think. Skye knocked a bar in this one.

Rip gets his AXJ!

2011-03-26T00:12:00.000-06:00

I am finally getting around to writing about our 3 day AKC show from last weekend. It was at Latigo, which is not my favorite facility but is certainly the closest to home at just 10 minutes away, so I always sign up for trials when they are available. It was really cold in the building on Friday and Saturday, since the arena is not heated. This isn't great for me, but the dogs definitely love it!

This was a random draw trial, which I typically dont enter as I dont like the whole concept of maybe or maybe not getting in, but it was also the same judge (Lisa Selthofer) I had when Skye got his MACH, and she has some neat courses, so this was added incentive to get into the trial.

On Friday, they were running FAST class for all levels, along with Excellent Standard and JWW. Rip was only entered in Open FAST and Exc. A JWW. Skye got to play in all classes.

Skye ran FAST first and it was a neat tunnel/tunnel/tunnel distance challenge - he got the Q. I usually try to come up with a plan to get all 80 points if I can. For Skye, my plan was to get 77 points, which we did, but we were a couple seconds over time so ended up with 74 points I believe.
Rip ran basically the same course, though his distance in Open is 10ft instead of 15ft. Rip also got the distance challenge, and my plan for him was to get 79 points. We did that, but again were a couple seconds over the buzzer so ended up with 76 points I think.
Here is the course map:

Here are their videos:
Skye

Rip

We then ran Standard. Only Skye was running since when we entered this trial, Rip was still in Open STD.
Skye was running fast, but we had a bobble after the AFrame and he went directly to the dogwalk instead of over the jump first.

Skye Exc. STD Friday:

For JWW, Skye ran first since he is in EXC B and Rip is in EXC A.
Both dogs Q'd the JWW course - it was a fun course to run and Rip was about 2/10ths faster than Skye. Skye had a better read on the jump before the tunnel. I only have video of Rip for this one:
Rip Exc JWW Friday:

Saturday was a great day for both dogs as they each got a Double Q, though Rip's was a Double Q in Exc. A.
Rip earned his AXJ title with his really great jumpers run. Rip ran this course about 1.2 seconds faster than Skye did, and I thought that Skye ran it really well. We were about 2 seconds off the fastest time. They were very close on time in the Standard course, though I felt they both ran the first half of the course very conservatively.

Rip Exc. A JWW Saturday

Skye Exc. B JWW Saturday

Rip Exc. A STD Saturday

Skye Exc. B STD Saturday

I dont yet have the video from Sunday's runs, but they were not quite as good as Saturday. I ended up with a Q for Skye in JWW and no Q's for Rip. I made the same handling mistake for both dogs in Standard. It was a Tire / Jump / Chute sequence after the table, and I drove both dogs too much before the sharp turn to the chute and they both ran around the back of it! I should have noticed that this required deceleration for the turn.

In Rip's JWW, I took my eyes off him briefly which then caused him to go behind me into the wrong end of a tunnel. It was an otherwise nice run.

Here are the Sunday courses:

Overall this was a really good trial for us. Rip did not miss any contacts and I believe he only dropped 1 bar the whole weekend. Skye was running fast and motivated and listened for his contacts with the exception of Sunday's STD.

Runs from the CKC show last week

2011-02-28T10:42:00.002-07:00

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

AKC at the Denver Stockshow

2011-02-24T21:09:00.001-07:00

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

2011-02-04T14:56:00.000-07:00

AKC at the not-so-cold Latigo

2011-02-01T01:08:00.000-07:00

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!

Goals!

2011-01-28T18:54:00.000-07:00

If you don't write down your goals, or tell anyone of them, are they really goals? We once had a student who said they had a goal to earn a big title by a certain time, but never told anyone about it until after they finally got that title. It seems to me that to be accountable first to yourself, you have to write down your goals, and then if you let others know about them, even if it's just a select few others, then you may get some assistance and motivation in achieving them.

At FAAD, we submit goals to Katrina in January each year. Since we have to write them down, come the next January, you can measure how you did. With Skye, I can go back a couple years and find we had issues that we still sometimes see still!

So, with that said, I am going to post my goals for Skye and Rip for this coming year. Maybe it makes them more real this way...

For Skye:

Short-term goals:

Continue practicing with toys and not food, keeping Skye very motivated during practice sessions..
Work on various distance skills, like turns from a tunnel and better push outs.
Keep working on the startline in practice – this has been paying off as he’s been much better during competition..
Need to proof frontcrossing the AFrame – these tend to push him off the side. Get him to keep driving down even if I am in front of the frame.
Work on being able to really peel off the weaves without causing popouts.

Long-term goals:

In 2011, I would like to earn Skye’s USDAA PDCH-Bronze. This will take getting 9 more Pairs Qs, 7 Gamble Qs, 3 Jumpers Qs, and 6 Standard Qs. This will not be an easy task.
Qualify for USDAA Nationals and attend the event in October in Kentucky.
Qualify for AKC Nationals for 2012, as we have done the last 2 years.
Earn at least two more placements in AKC. We managed to get a 2nd and 3rd in 2010, so I would like to meet and improve on that. This can be challenging as we never compete against less than 25 dogs. More typically, its 50 - 75 dogs in the 20" class.

For Rip:

Short-term goals:

More practicing on the contact retraining. Continue to use the target to get him driving into position – don’t try to fade it so fast in practice.
Keep working his bar issues by varying jumpheights, including lots of crossing on jumpers type courses, doing figure-8 jumps, and other jumping exercises.
Continue to push for more speed in the weaves. Periodically open the channels to get him moving faster and faster. Once a month, film the weave performance and time it to measure any improvements.
Be more consistent with practice outside of classtime. I’d like to practice at least 2 times a week outside of class, and would prefer 3 or 4 times a week.
Enforce contact performance in competition – at the very least, mark an intentionally jumped contact with a down.

Long-term goals:

For AKC, I would like to earn Rip’s first Double Q, which will require us to get out of Open Standard, and Exc. A Jumpers.
Qualify for USDAA Nationals and attend the event in October in Kentucky. We are already qualified in Team, and have 1 Q in Steeplechase.
Improve our speed enough to be within 2 or 3 seconds of 1st place in a big AKC or USDAA competition.
Advance to the Masters level in USDAA and earn Rip’s MAD. We need 3 Adv. Standard Qs to get to Masters in everything, and then will need 3 Master Standard Qs and 1 Q in each of the games (we already have Pairs and Gamblers)

Skye's runs from USDAA Longmont

2011-01-14T23:40:00.004-07:00

Here are most of Skye's runs from the show (those that got recorded anyway)

Rip's runs from USDAA Longmont

2011-01-14T09:57:00.002-07:00

Here are Rip's runs from the weekend.

USDAA Longmont Recap

2011-01-12T23:04:00.000-07:00

This USDAA trial was nice and relaxing with only 1 ring - no conflicts to worry about. It will be nice to get Rip up into Masters for all classes so that I wont ever have conflicts, but that's going to be a little while still.

We had 2 classes to run on Friday afternoon - Gamblers and Grand Prix. Since I've decided I want to go to Cynosport for 2010, I have signed up for Grand Prix to try and get my qualifying Q's.

We started with Master Gamblers. I've never run a Gamblers class where there was a 0% Q rate - and now I can say that I have! There were 46 Master level dogs between Championship and Performance, and not one dog got this gamble. I watched a number of dogs attempt it and get the offcourse jump coming out of the tunnel. I decided to try a resend of sorts, calling Skye toward me, and then trying to resend to the far away jump. This was tricky as they would have to pass the tunnel entrance up if they headed in the right direction. Regardless - Skye grabbed the closest jump and we didnt come close. Rip then got to try, and I attempted a similar tactic, only I rotated before the resend and sent him over the nearby jump back towards the tunnel. This is a gamble I should setup to see what it takes to get the dogs to turn away and seek out the right jump. I posted the coursemap at the bottom (thanks Elayne - I stole your scan)

For Grand Prix, there were a couple challenges with a sharp turn to the weaves at the beginning, and a DW / Tunnel discrimination. Skye ran it really nice, except he jumped his dogwalk contact. That was his only fault. For Rip, we were having a great run until after the dogwalk when I didn't properly support a jump and pulled him off it. I put him over the jump and we finished with Rip running past the Chute (a theme for this trial). Rip did hit all his contacts.

Jumpers was up first on Saturday. Skye ran a really great run, fast and motivated and we were clean for a 1st place. Rip was then up for his first Advanced jumpers since moving up at the last trial - he really nailed it and ran great. All bars stay up for a Q & 1st place (thanks to Bode dropping a bar).

Rip got to run Steeplechase - I hadn't entered Skye as he already has his 2 Q's for Nationals, and my entry fee was high enough already. Rip did a great job with a nice Steeplechase run and pretty good time. Bummer is, he jumped his AFrame contact, so that 5 point fault kept us out of round 2 and getting a Q by 1/10 of a second over the cutoff.

Contacts became an issue for Standard. Skye missed his dogwalk contact, and then Rip missed his AFrame again, and did not meet criteria on the dogwalk either. We AGAIN had issue with the chute - it was the 2nd obstacle and Rip decided to run around it. I brought him back and he did it right the 2nd time.

Pairs was next. I havent entered Skye in a pairs run since August 2009, since he really is a butthead, and gets all worked up around other dogs, so rather than stress about it, we just didnt enter after getting the 5 Q's needed for his PDCH. Since I decided to try for his PDCH-Bronze, we will need 10 more pairs Q's! Ugh. Well at least Skye got the Q. We ran with a steady but really slow dog. They took 30 seconds, and we took 15 seconds, just fast enough for the Q.

Rip ran pairs in Masters for the first time ever - he moved up at the last trial. We were paired with speedy Bode. We actually had a nice fast run, but each of us had a bar knocked, and Bode also had a refusal. Still our time was only 3 seconds off first place - not bad. Even with the faults, we still managed a Q! This was the only bar Rip knocked all weekend, and he's done this in the past in other pairs runs, where he isnt really paying attention and hits the first bar.

Sunday was snowing, and many competitors bailed, so it was quite a small group of die-hards left for the Snooker and Standard runs. We managed to be done by Noon for the slow ride home in the snow.

Snooker was fun - shortlived for Rip though. Rip backjumped the 2nd red so we were done pretty quick. Skye ran a very nice course, getting 7+6+6 and finishing the closing. He ended up with 1st place and another SuperQ!

Again in Standard, I had contact issues with both dogs. Rip missed his dogwalk contact again. This is pretty painful after all the work we have done to 'fix' this issue already, but back to the drawing board again. He will do the 2on2off in practice, but is too amped in a trial to do it. I need to start pulling him for these obvious misses. Maybe try a DOCNA trial where we can redo. Not only did Rip miss his DW, but AGAIN with the Chute. First try, run past, bring him back, and he runs past it again. Ugh, bring him back a third time and he does it.
Skye ran a good Standard course, though he missed his AFrame. His dogwalk was very close too. I botched the handling of a jump after the AFrame, but generally it was nice and fast.

Over Christmas and New Years, we take 2 weeks off of training. I am afraid this affected our contact performance. They both hit about 50% of their contacts. Not sure what is up with Rip's Chute performance, but I will now be taking that out to do some practice before our next trial - an AKC show the last weekend of January.

USDAA Weekend coming up!

2011-01-06T23:48:00.001-07:00

Finally after a month and a half since our last trial on Thanksgiving weekend we are competing again. We have what should be a relaxing 1 ring USDAA trial in Longmont. Skye and Rip are entered in everything, and this will be Rip's first Masters Pairs run. We still need 1 more Q in Snooker to move up to Masters there, though we dont have any Q's yet in Advanced Std or Jumpers.
This trial is starting on Friday afternoon with Gamblers and Grand Prix.

Katrina is running Baby, Rush and Ice too, though I think she has just one run per day per dog. Baby is just one jumpers Q away from getting her (new name, PDCH), which would give her the champion title in both Performance and Championship divisions.

USDAA has decided to rename some of the titles for the Performance division to more closely match the Championship division names, so what was the APD is now the PDCH.
The P1 is PD (Performance Dog)
The PII is APD (Advanced Performance Dog)
The PIII is MPD (Masters Performance Dog)

We had class this week, though took a 2 week break from training during the holidays. Rip ran well in class but Skye was a bit crazy - glad Gamblers is first!

For Skye, I am going to try and earn his PDCH-Bronze, which means I need to start entering Pairs again. I stopped entering it after 5 Q's since he doesn't like any dogs, and I don't like the stress of worrying if he's going to go after a dog. Hopefully going forward Katrina can enter Baby in pairs and we can get 10 Q's that way ;)
Skye has 15 Snooker Qs, 11 Jumpers, 9 Standards, 8 Gamblers and just the 5 Pairs. We already have our Tournament requirements, so I can see this ultimately coming down to a Pairs run!

Should be a good time!

Should I stay or should I go now?

2010-12-03T12:48:00.004-07:00

Skye and I qualified for the 2011 AKC National Agility Championships that are going to be held in Lexington, Virginia in April. I've been debating with myself if I want to make the commitment to drive all that way. It's 1500 miles away.

The Pros:
Skye has been running great lately - fast and motivated, and we have been very consistent. He got his MACH this year.
He's in him prime, age-wise.
Qualifying is not easy, so who knows if we will qualify for the following year's Nationals.
You never know what next year could bring - dogs get injured, etc. Hate to have regrets that I 'should have gone'.

The Cons:
It's really far away - almost 3 days drive each way, plus 3 days for the event. It will end up being very expensive for 5 runs. (Skye is NOT flying!)
We did not have a good Nationals experience this year - Skye was stressed and then I was stressed. Many popped weave poles.
Katrina did not qualify with Baby, so not sure she would even want to go.
Skye is not fast enough to be really competitive - so best we could hope for is probably a top 30 finish if we ran clean.
Likely not a lot of Colorado people going since it is so far.
Have to drive across Kansas ! LOL

SO, lots to think about. The event opened for entry Dec. 1st, and will close on Jan 19th.
http://www.akc.org/events/agility/national_agility_championship/

Perception is not reality

2010-11-30T00:07:00.004-07:00

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!

2010-11-29T20:19:00.002-07:00

(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

2010-11-19T14:11:00.002-07:00

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

Took the left turn to Albuquerque

2010-11-16T00:16:00.006-07:00

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.

Rip's USDAA DAM Team runs

2010-10-10T10:14:00.000-06:00

Rip and Skye qualify in USDAA Team!

2010-10-06T19:38:00.002-06:00

We had a local USDAA trial last weekend in Fountain, CO - only about 35 minutes away. This show offers DAM team on Friday and Katrina and I were looking to pair - we put Baby and Skye together in a Performance Versatility team, and we had Rip & Ice together and were looking for a 3rd. After almost not entering, we ended up partnering with Stacy Peardot-Goudy's awesome youngster SoBe. So it was a young-dog team looking to play with the big dogs.

What a blast we had! Skye and Baby had 1st place after 2 rounds, but some dropped bars in Jumpers and a mistake on my part in Gamblers moved us down to 5th place going into the team relay. We had a great clean relay run and moved back up to finish in 3rd place of the 10 teams.

The Rip, Ice and SoBe team did awesome (Rip's having a SoBe on Ice)! There were 18 teams total and we were in 2nd place after the 1st round, but slipped to 3rd after the Standard round with a couple missed contacts by Ice and SoBe and a dropped bar by Ice (Rip was clean, though not fast). After Jumpers we maintained our 3rd place position. We ended up going conservative in the closing of Gamblers (a timed gamble) and though we all had good points, those dogs that went aggressive ended up pushing us down to 5th place. We had an almost clean (1 bar) relay to finish it up and wound up sticking to our 5th place finish! What a great accomplishment - no offcourses by any of the baby dogs!

The rest of the weekend consisted of regular classes- we did not do the other tournament classes. Rip got 2 Qs - one in Advanced Pairs and one in Masters Gamblers. He had two awesome starter jumpers runs, but 1 bar down in each. He also had a clean (except for DW up contact) starter Standard run. Snooker wasn't our game this weekend as we failed to make it to the closing in both attempts.

Skye ran Snooker, Jumpers and Gamblers for the rest of the weekend - he had 2 great Gamblers runs with Q's (now that we dont need them for APD, we get them!). We had a great Jumpers Q and a Q in snooker that wasn't pretty. He had a "what the?" moment in a jumpers course on the third obstacle when he decided to head left when I went way to the right.

All in all a very good weekend. The weather was perfect and the company was great. One thing we see at this trial that we see nowhere else - the trains that had to rumble by 100 feet from the park every hour or so, blowing their very loud whistle as they went by.

I will post the videos I have in an upcomming post.

Skye earns his APD!

2010-09-24T00:29:00.006-06:00

I've been waiting to post the news that Skye finally earned his APD at the FRAT USDAA trial in Brighton, CO, on Sept. 4th. until I had the video.
We needed that final Gamblers Q to get that title, and we've been unsuccessful in the last 3 or 4 gamble attempts.

This gamble was setup as a teeter/jump/jump sequence layered by the dogwalk. It just happens to be a skill that I have practiced before in some of our 'distance challenge' classes. Skye has a really good distance teeter, so I felt like we had a good chance at hitting it, and he got it perfectly!

Rats!!

2010-08-28T23:28:00.006-06:00

My friend Lana has opened a web store for these cool toys she has been making. Her specialty are these realistic rats made of cowhide. Everyone that trains with us loves them, so we suggested she offer them up for sale. She also has tugs and rings and frisbee toys. I created a web store for her - have a look! www.kat-rats.com

Skye and Rip having USDAA fun in Laramie.

2010-08-28T20:08:00.001-06:00

We went up to Laramie last weekend for the USDAA trial - this one is nice because it's one ring, so no conflicts, and they have some runs on Friday afternoon so the other days are not really long.

Skye was trying for that last Gamblers leg to finish his APD title (Accomplished Performance Dog) which is equivalent to the ADCH title in the Championship division. I thought it would be a gamble he could get, but I lost my head and didnt call him out of a tunnel, and he took a jump that was not in sequence.

Generally both of my guys had a really good weekend. They each earned 4 Q's out of 7 runs.
Skye was running fast and putting up some good times. We had a missed DW contact in one STD and a refusal in one Jumpers, but were otherwise clean and having great runs. He also made it to round 2 of performance Steeplechase and got a 2nd place to win $12!

Rip had some great runs too, and ended up finishing his Starter Snooker and Starter Pairs titles. We even got a Standard Q! He hit every contact this weekend, and missed getting a 2nd Standard Q by being enticed to the offcourse weaves. He had a great Jumpers run but I caused him to knock the last stinkin bar. Generally, he kept all the bars up which is a big accomplishment for him!
I had entered Rip in his first ever Steeplechase run and he managed to get into round 2! You have to be within 25% of the fastest 3 dogs' average time. 20 dogs made it into round 2 and we were 18th. In round 2, he did knock a bar (which just adds 5 seconds to your time), but many more experienced dogs had trouble with this course and went offcourse. Rip ended up in 8th place in round 2!

I'll post some video when I get it loaded on youtube.

All in all it was a fun time hanging out with Katrina & the pups in our camper in Laramie!

Next up, USDAA over Labor Day weekend in Brighton.

Rip's out of Novice!

2010-08-18T14:58:00.005-06:00

Finally, at the last AKC trial, Rip got that Standard Q to move out of Novice (in AKC at least). He had a few small issues in Open JWW though, including a bar down in each run, our nemesis. Generally I was really happy with these 3 runs that are on the video. The missing run is where he was pulled shortly after starting the course for launching the AFrame.

Youtube erased my original music, so I picked one from their audioswap collection.

MACH Skye!

2010-07-24T19:56:00.004-06:00

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!

USDAA at Black Forest Park

2010-07-01T12:15:00.005-06:00

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.

MACH Fail

2010-06-18T23:51:00.002-06:00

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!

2010-06-10T16:12:00.003-06:00

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

2010-06-01T12:45:00.002-06:00

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!

AKC report from last week, Cairn Terrier Show

2010-05-31T00:57:00.001-06:00

This is a little late, but I better post for my own records!

I only ran Skye at the Cairn terrier club trial. Rip is still on his 'probation' period from contact retraining - though watch for Mr Rip to give those contacts a try at our DOCNA trial!

The short version is, we had a great weekend. Skye went 5/6 getting two more Double Q's, which puts us at 18 now - just 2 to go!
On Friday, in our first run (JWW) he came out of the weaves early at pole 11, exiting on the wrong side. That was our only fault of the weekend. Skye was running fast and energetic on Friday. We had a great Standard run as "fast Skyeboy" ended up taking 4th place of the 50 twenty inch dogs.

Saturday was a warm day - I think it was already about 70 degrees at 7am when I arrived. Skye runs slower when its warm, so he wasnt quite on fire like the day before, but still, he ran focused and got those two Q's.

On Sunday, we had a clean JWW run to start the day, though in STD Skye tried to blow our run - but the agility Gods were looking out for us. We should have been called for the AFrame contact, but apparently I had positioned myself just right between the judge and Skye, so she didnt see the launch. Then, coming off the table, he should have come to me and gone in the tunnel like I was aiming toward with my hand and feet. Instead, he thought I meant to go behind me, where my butt was pointing, and take the dogwalk. I gave a little primal scream and got his attention, keeping him off the DW and getting him into the tunnel. Yea! We finished Sunday with a stolen Double Q !

Greg & Skyeboy

Skye goes for his APD at USDAA in Pueblo

2010-05-20T00:26:00.006-06:00

Well we didn't get our APD this weekend, but I am happy with the runs we had.
Skye needs one more gamble Q to get his APD and we had two attempts this passed weekend.

Saturday's gamble really was one we should have had. It was a jump, push out to a tunnel straight ahead, and coming out of the tunnel, turn to the teeter. Skye has a great distance teeter, but I stopped supporting the tunnel too soon and pulled him right off of it.

Sunday's gamble was more challenging, and I was focused on the 'hard part' of turning the dog coming out of a tunnel into another tunnel under the DW, and keeping them off the 2 jumps that were straight ahead of the dog. I focused on that part so much, I didnt give enough pressure to make sure he went into the first tunnel, and he instead climbed the dogwalk. Ah well, we really didnt get an attempt at that gamble.

I only entered Skye in a few other runs this weekend.
We did snooker both days. This was the first time I ran snooker and didnt actually need a Super Q, so in our first snooker, I ran conservative, like a 5+7+3 course, and got a Q with 3rd place (getting through #6 in the closing).
On Sunday's snooker, I thought we could get all 7's in time (teeter + jump combo), so decided to go for it - and we got it and got through the closing for a 1st and another Super Q!

Our other runs were on Saturday - Jumpers to start the day off. The ground was still wet, and Skye took 2 bars, so NQ. The other run was Standard, and we had a very nice run for a Q & 1st.

So, I've debated, with myself mostly, about going for Super Q's in snooker when you dont need them. I know some people will always go for 7's for the challenge it presents, and some will just make a course that flows. I think that if I needed a Super Q, and knew that my competitors didnt try their hardest, and I got the SQ, it wouldnt be worth as much. It's more satisfying to get it when everyone else is giving 100%. Sometimes slower dogs will get a course that is better for them, and the faster dogs will offcourse. So, I think I will still run my future snooker courses trying to get as many points as I can. Now, if someone was to actually ask me to not go for it, would I? Hmmm.

Public Service Announcement

2010-04-29T15:06:00.003-06:00

I know many of us have had financial struggles during this recession, so as a service to all my readers, I am going to pass along the email from Mr Glasgow - he is looking to give someone some money, so you may contact him on my behalf if you'd like ;)
Greg

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

From: Mr. Thomas Glasgow
arclaysankplc@mycin.net
Remittance Manager
Barclays Bank Plc.
Phone Number: +44-762-419-0409

Attention: Beneficiary

This Is To Officially Inform You That We Have Verified Your Contract Inheritance File Presently On My Desk, And I Found Out That You Have Not Received Your Payment Due To Your Lack Of Co-Operation And Not Fulfilling The Obligations Giving To You In Respect To Your Contract /Inheritance Payment.

Secondly, You Are Hereby Advice To Stop Dealing With Some Non-Officials In The Bank As This Is An Illegal Act And Will Have To Stop If You So Wish To Receive Your Payment Immediately. After The Board Meeting Held At Our Headquarters, We Have Resolved In Finding A Solution To Your Problem, And As You May Know, We Have Arranged Your Payment Through Our Swift Card Payment Centre In Europe, America And Asia Pacific, Which Is Then Instruction Given By Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth.

This Card Centre Will Send You An Atm Card Which You Will Use To Withdraw Your Money In An Atm Machine In Any Part Of The World, But The Maximum Is (Ј15,000.00) Five Thousand British Pound Per Transaction. So, If You Like To Receive Your Fund This Way, Ј15,000 Gbp For You To Withdraw For A Day And Each Transaction Is Ј5,000gbp Minimum Which You Have To Withdraw Ј15,000 Gbp For One Working Day Also Be Informed That The Total Amount In The Swift Atm Card Is Ј14.6 Million Gbp.

(1) Your Full Name:
(2) Your Address Where You Want the Payment Centre to Send Your Atm Card.:
(3) Phone and Fax Number:
(4) Age and Occupation:
(5) Your Nearest International Air Port in Your City Of Residence:

We Shall Be Expecting To Receive Your Information You Have Stop Any Further Communication With Anybody Or Office. On This Regards, Do Not Hesitate To Contact Me For More Details And Direction, And Also Please Do Update Me With Any New Development.

Thanks for Your Co-Operation.

Best Regards,

Mr. Thomas Glasgow
Remittance Manager
Barclays Bank Plc

Barclays Bank Plc. Registered In England. Barclays Bank Plc Is Authorized And Regulated By The Financial Services Authority (Fsa). Registered No 1026167. Barclays Insurance Services Company Limited Is Authorized And Regulated By The Fsa. Registered No 973765. Registered Office For Both: 1 Churchill Place, London, E14 5hp. "The Woolwich" And "Woolwich" Are Trademarks And Trading Names Of Barclays Bank Plc. Barclays Business Is A Trading Name Of Barclays Bank Plc. Barclays Bank Plc Subscribes To The Lending Code Which Is Monitored And Enforced By The Lending Standards Board And Is Licensed And Regulated By The Office Of Fair Trading For The Provision Of Credit Products To Consumers And Related Services.

The Singing Frog

2010-04-25T19:39:00.004-06:00

Anybody remember the classic Looney Tunes cartoon about Michigan J. Frog, aka "The Singing Frog"?
The worker finds a box with a singing frog in it. The frog sings great for him and he wants to show everyone. But... whenever anyone else is around, the frog doesnt sing. Just croooaaakkk. Thats it - no music, no nothing, just a frog.

Well, Rip is a singing frog! In practice, just us, he does great! He flys through his weaves, with me front crossing, rear crossing, running by, doing crazy things, and Rip stays in them, never popping out.
In front of anyone though, its like he doesnt even know how to weave. Pops out every time, unfocused, slow. It just kills me!
I dont want him to be a singing frog!!

Video from AKC last weekend

2010-04-16T00:18:00.001-06:00

Here are Skye's runs from last weekend:

Here are two of Rip's runs:

AKC at Castle Rock, April 2010

2010-04-14T09:52:00.006-06:00

Here is a cool picture of Rip from his first USDAA trial last October. I was going through Ken Gee's unpurchased photo box and found that one that I had not seen before, so I had to get it!

So, we were at the AKC trial at Castle Rock this weekend, on Saturday and Sunday.
Skye brought his focus this weekend and we managed to Q all our runs, going 4/4 and getting 2 more Double Q's, bringing us ever closer to getting our MACH. He ran fast on Saturday, not quite as fast on Sunday, but still very good. I was happy with his performance on these fairly tough courses.

Some may recall our weave issues from AKC Nationals. Though I didn't mention our trip to a USDAA trial two weekends ago, since getting back from Nationals, he has done his weaves correctly all 13 times he's been given an opportunity to do so! That makes me a little crazy - why couldn't he do them at Nationals? I dont know, but he's doing fine now, so lets go with it.

Rip had a typical Rip weekend, getting no Q's but having a good time trying. He's much closer to success in his JWW runs than Standard. On Saturday in JWW, he popped out of the weaves twice, so we moved on and finished the course. He seemed a bit distracted and un-energetic, but we did have to wait from 7am until 2pm before he got to run his first run. In his STD on Saturday, we had the typical jumped contacts, along with odd distractions causing him to come off the table and head in the opposite direction I was going and other things.

Sunday was a little better - he dropped one bar (again) in JWW on an otherwise nice run. Thats about 5 or 6 runs in JWW where his only issue has been 1 bar. In Standard, he tried much harder and was so close to actually getting a Q. He remembered that we have been working a 2-on-2-off on the dogwalk, and stopped nicely at the end, but by the time we got to the AFrame, he had forgotten again and missed that contact. The rest of his run was clean with no redo's or crazyness.
At least he did not run by any contacts this weekend, and he kept all the bars up except for the one in Sundays JWW.

These were the Excellent courses from Sunday. There were only 15 Q's out of the 75 20" dogs in Standard.

I've decided not to enter Rip in any trials for the next two months so I can really focus on getting a solid 2on2off performance (with speed, no creeping!) and also to do a lot more proofing on his weaves to keep those pop-outs to a minimum. He hits his entries every time, but does tend to then pop out or go slow like he's worried about them. We'll get there!

Greg & Skyeboy & Rip

Belated AKC Nationals report

2010-04-06T00:07:00.003-06:00

Its been a little over a week since AKC Nationals wrapped up.

My first Nationals was an experience, mixed with "the thrill of victory, and the agony of defeat" as the beginning of the weekend sports programs used to say.

As you know, I was running Baby for Katrina, as well as running Skye. Running Baby was a lot of fun, and we were really sooo close to being right there with the best of them. In Friday's State team tournament, Baby and I managed to be 4th place for Colorado (there were just over 50 Colorado dogs). She ran really well for me - we would have been in 1st for Colorado except for her missing a weave entry (which she never does).

On Saturday, the day started with Standard and we had a beautiful run. Unfortunately, Katrina had to tell me that we got called for the dogwalk contact.
Saturday afternoon's JWW was the only run where Baby did not run connected for me - she was searching around for Katrina while we were warming up, and then she did it a few times while running too. This caused a refusal since she wasn't paying attention! Baby's final run on Sunday in the Hybrid round went great and was a clean run. Overall, she placed I think 96th of 225 dogs, due to a fault in 2 of her 3 runs. Without those faults, she would have been in the top 25.

So, for me and Skye, it was not a good experience. He went 0/5, with all but 1 run being a zero point run. Weaves were the biggest issue - he would meander out about pole 4 looking at me, and wouldn't weave when I put him back in - this was in 4/5 runs. The one run he actually did weave correctly was the run where he knocked a bar, jumped a contact and got a refusal. We finished just barely above the people who did not show up :-\ . Pretty depressing. When we got home, I put him through the weaves out front and he did them super fast without a problem with a ball for reward. Who knows what was going on - I just know it's not an experience I will repeat with him.

I've been considering mostly retiring him from agility after his MACH and Perf. ADCH titles are earned, both of which we are close to earning. My initial thoughts about retiring him stem from his reactive behavior with other dogs. He really has to be managed and kept out of other dogs space - he will lunge at them, and sometimes bark his fool head off depending on the dog. It's something I really hate, and can make it stressful when we are in a cramped area getting ready for our turn. This is totally not an issue with Rip, which is how it should be. Skye also does not like to run when its warm - he will just shut down and go in slow motion. So.... add those issues to my Nationals experience, and I think just focusing on Rip going forward will be more rewarding for me, and probably less stressful for Skye. I will decide when the time comes.

Comments anyone?

2010-04-04T20:48:00.004-06:00

I've talked to at least 4 people in person who have tried to post a comment to my blog and have been unable to do so. I just selected a new Blogger template - not sure what the issue is, but will start here.

I have also opened up comments to everyone, including Anonymous.

If you have a chance, please just try to put a simple comment to this post to see if it works. If it doesn't, I know you cant leave me a comment about that! But, if you are unable to comment, please just send me an email stating that you cant comment to my email address skyeboy1@gmail.com

Thanks!.

*** Edit

I have enabled 'pop up' comments per the suggestion of others on the blogger support forums that have been having the same kind of problems with comments.

Then if this doesnt do it, the next step is to use a 3rd party comment manager instead of Blogger comments - apparently this is a good solution but requires a bit of configuring.

AKC Report and Nationals is almost here!

2010-03-24T00:25:00.003-06:00

First, I got this cool picture of Rip at our last AKC trial this past weekend - I like his intense look and how he's tucked his front paws up tight to get over the bar.

So last weekend we attended a very local (10 minutes from home) AKC trial hosted by a new club. They did a great job and had a nice judge, great ribbons, "Q" cookies and gave out patches if you got a double Q. Lots of nice touches.

Skye had a very successful weekend, and missed going 4/4 by just 1 weave pole. He had a nice clean Jumpers run on Saturday, and in Standard he somehow came out the wrong side of the weaves at pole 11. Still, it was a nice run, but they dont count that way!

On Sunday, we ran a couple nice courses and got a Double Q! This was a good feeling going into the AKC Nationals.

Rip ran as well, and though we did not get any Q's this time, we still had some good runs. Both of his Open JWW runs were great with just 1 bar down in each.

In Standard on Saturday, he really launched the dogwalk which was the 4th obstacle in. I pulled him from the course as I can't let this keep happening in competition.

Saturday after the trial we practiced more 2o2o performances on the dogwalk, and it did translate better at the trial on Sunday, as in his Standard run he hit both the dogwalk and aframe contacts nicely, though wouldn't you figure, he launched his teeter! It's always something with this boy, but once we get it together, watch out!

So we have a big snowstorm tonight and into tomorrow, just to mess up getting ready for the AKC Nationals. I will be running both Skye and Baby (wife's dog) at Nationals, since she is hurt with a hamstring pull. I am really looking forward to it. There are a lot of Colorado competitors going - something like 50+. Really, if I just ran clean, that would be great!

Quick Day 1 update of the AKC trial

2010-03-13T20:22:00.005-07:00

While I am thinking of it, I should take note of today's runs.

In addition to running Skye and Rip today, I also got to run Baby since Katrina is hurt (and hurt pretty bad with a torn hamstring muscle).

The day started too early, as is usually the case with agility trials. Because Katrina is using crutches, I had to do all the morning 'chores' we do to get ready to go, and this put us behind leaving the house by about 20 minutes. Then about a half hour from home, the truck made a weird noise that I discovered was the passenger side front wheel trying to come off. 4 of the 8 lugs had snapped clear off, one of the lug nuts was gone, and one had backed itself halfway off. This left just 2 lugnuts holding the wheel on, and they were not doing a good job at it. I decided it was too dangerous to continue like this, so I tightened the lugs, swiped one from the back wheel so that the front would at least have 4, and limbered home. We traded out the truck for the Magnum and stuffed the 4 dogs and our stuff in there and off we went again.

All the shenanigans put us arriving at the trial close to 8:30 so I had missed my walkthrough for Skye's class - I watched some dogs run it and decided it wasn't a very complex course, so I moved us to the end of the running order and ran him. It was a little slow, but we actually Q'd this Standard course!

Almost right after that, I got to walk Baby's Exc. JWW course and run her. We had a great run and got a Q and 4th place (out of about 35).

As it turns out, we could have gone home right then and the results of the day wouldn't have been affected. Doh!!

I ran Skye in the same JWW course as I had just run Baby, and his run was good but he knocked 1 bar, so NQ, and no double Q today. Then I ran Baby in the Standard course that I had already run Skye in, and I slipped a little after the table, causing me to be out of position and having Baby go in the wrong end of a tunnel. NQ for her and no double Q.

At the end of the day, it was Mr Exciting's turn. Rip ran his Open JWW course first. Not a bad run, but he knocked the 2nd bar, so it was not going to be a Q right from the start. He again popped his weaves at pole 10, but I just went on as the run was toast already. I HAVE to move my practice weaves back to the front yard and make sure he goes through them a couple times a day.

The last run of the day was Rip's Novice Standard. Same story, different day unfortunately. He again jumped both his dogwalk and aframe contacts. Ugh, I have worked to fix this with a stop (2o2o) in training, but with not much training getting done the last 2 weeks after his neuter surgery, he just reverted back to the leaping behavior. I am getting pretty frustrated at this, and know I am going to have to step up his understanding of the criteria, and pull him from Standard runs when he leaps.

So, tomorrow only Skye and Baby will be running - the trial was full so Rip only got in Saturday.

Rip gets neutered tomorrow....

2010-03-01T23:16:00.002-07:00

Rip is now just about 2 1/2 years old. I had always intended to get him neutered, and wanted to wait until I was sure he was done growing. My original plan was to have it done somewhere around his 2nd birthday, but the timing didn't work out, so now it's his time.

Katrina is going to take him in tomorrow, along with our one other un-neutered male "Flame" and they will both get done the same day.

Rip only has 1 testicle that "dropped" when he was a puppy, so the other is in his abdomen somewhere. I hope they dont have trouble locating it, and it doesn't affect the surgery too much.

He is entered in an AKC trial for 1 day on the 14th, so hopefully he will be healed up by then or he will just have to skip it and get the next one.

Skye and Rip's CKC report.

2010-02-16T23:36:00.001-07:00

Skye and Rip did 2 days of the big 4 day CKC AKC trial this past weekend. I think if the venue were closer, I would take advantage of the 4 days, but getting up at 4:45am two days in a row is all I can handle!

There were a number if "Firsts" for us - Rip ran his first FAST runs ever. One of the distance bonuses had an aframe, which he launched with authority, and the other was a jump-tunnel sequence that I think he could do with MY eyes shut. He went 1 of 2 for Q's in FAST, with a 2nd place (pretty good since I didnt really have a plan when I got to the line).

On Saturday, I again had trouble with Rip popping out of the weaves. He's managed to hit every entry presented to him, but on many occasions he's come out of them. I talked to Katrina about it and she commented on how I appear unconfident that he will get them, so that could be feeding into the problem. On Sunday, I just ran him and drove the weaves as though he will get them no problem, and he DID all three times.

He had a great Open JWW run on Sunday with a 2nd place and his first Open JWW Q. He missed both Standards, once with a jumped AFrame and once with a jumped Dogwalk. Note to self, next time train a STOP on the contact first, then train a running...

Skye was pretty consistent with 4/6 Q's. My non-distance dog managed to get Q's in BOTH of his Excellent FAST runs this weekend, and that completes our Exc. A FAST title, so we move to B whenever they offer it again. Sunday's distance challenge was a flip into a tunnel off the dogwalk, away from the handler. Only 5 total Excellent dogs (all heights) got the challenge, and only 3 of the 20" dogs got it. Skye got 1st place in that one!

In Saturday's Standard run, we got a mystery call while Skye was down on the table. I saw the judges hands go up at about the count of 3 - made no sense and messed with my head so I made a couple handling mistakes after that which caused the panel jump to be knocked. If I was otherwise clean I would have pursued the call with the judge, but at that point it didnt matter. Maybe she thought I had touched Skye when trying to get the table down? Dont know.
*lesson* - dont watch the judge , just run as though you are NOT being judged!!

And my Blooper moment of the weekend, on Sunday, I ran smack into a jump wing after rotating for a front cross. Remarkably the bar did not fall, but it put me behind and caused Skye to come off a jump. It was otherwise a nice run!

Rips runs from AKC PPOC

2010-02-03T19:27:00.001-07:00

Here are Rip's runs from last weekend:

Latigo AKC Trial - we have Heat, sort-of...

2010-01-31T23:26:00.004-07:00

(Love this pic of Rip floating over the dogwalk)

Rip and Skye played AKC agility at our nearby facility, Latigo Trails, this weekend. Latigo is only 10 minutes from home, so I rarely pass up an opportunity to trial there. They told us they would have finally installed heat in the arena this winter, but they were only able to install some radiant heat over the small bleachers. It was appreciated, as we had an area to sit and warm up, but the rest of the arena probably never hit 40 degrees all weekend. Burrrrr! Maybe by our March trial...

Anyway, it was an OK weekend performance-wise. Skye went 2/4, getting Q's in both his JWW runs, but no Q's in Standard this weekend. Saturday's standard was not good, and I ended up pulling him from the course at the table which was obstacle #8. He had popped his weaves, then entered pole 2 when I made him redo, and then he fell off the side of the dogwalk since he was looking at the judge and not where he was going. Then on the table, he popped up before the count was done, so Mr. No Focus was pulled before we could embarrass ourselves any further.

Skye's Standard run on Sunday was much better, with the only fault being the AFrame contact. I have a training issue to work on with regards to contacts where there is a tunnel between me and the contact. Skye has a tendency to come off the side of the obstacle when I am not right there next to it - I really need to set this up and proof it in training.

So, I am bummed that we did not get a Double Q this weekend, but you gotta be happy with a steady 50% Q rate.

Mr Rip had a fun time this weekend. He always runs with such enthusiasm and seems to have a great time just doing agility. He only got 1 Q in his 4 runs, but it was a Standard Q for once. I am also happy to say he only dropped 1 bar all weekend. He had a great Open Jumpers run on Sunday with just that 1 bar down. His other Open JWW run on Saturday wasn't bad, but he did pop his weaves and then have a run-by on a jump followed by a couple offcourse jumps. He DID hit a really tough weave entry that almost no novice dogs hit on Saturday.

We do have A LOT to work on of course, and trialing makes this more apparent. I had another episode of Rip running by the dogwalk, just like I had in his previous trial. He did that on Saturday. I also had him pop out of the weaves on both of Saturday's runs. He is popping out when I pass him - so many more reps needed there with reinforcing of him staying in the poles and doing his job. I am also seeing a deteriorated performance in his teeter. He is leaping when it hits the ground. He didn't get called on this, but it's not his performance, and it is getting worse.

Finally, just like I have done on his dogwalk, I am going to have to introduce a stop at the bottom of the AFrame until he understands what his job is. He missed a Standard Q on Saturday by leaping the AFrame again. He's probably missed 5 or 6 Q's in Standard by leaping contacts, though now its the frame instead of dogwalk.

So, in addition to our normal training, we will be stepping up training of:

Teeter leapage

AFrame stop

Weave pops

Dogwalk runby

Videos to follow.

Rip's videos from the USDAA show

2010-01-08T15:56:00.001-07:00

Here are the videos from Rip's runs (those that were taped at least) from last weekend's USDAA.

I have an AKC trial this weekend for Skye and Rip as well!

Skye and Rip play USDAA in the new year!

2010-01-04T23:06:00.002-07:00

I did a 3 day USDAA trial at the Douglas County Fairgrounds over New Year's weekend. I didnt think ahead that it would mean I had to be in bed early new years eve.

On Friday, I scratched Rip from his 3 runs as he was still favoring his right rear leg a little from tweaking it on Thursday.

For Skye, I had signed up for PVP Team with Pete & his Kelpie Rex. Skye ran great in Team and didn't have any offcourses. Unfortunately, on Friday Rex had an offcourse in Jumpers which knocked us down in the standings, but we still were above the "Q" line.

On Friday, we also ran round 1 of Performance Steeplechase, and Skye got 1st place!

On Saturday, we finished Team competition with team Snooker and Relay. Skye did great again but Rex had another offcourse in Relay, so that put us out of contention for the team "Q". If Rex had finished his 2 courses, we would have been just 20 points out of first place.

We also ran round 2 of Performance Steeplechase - only 3 dogs in the 22" height had moved to the finals. We ran a good course and got 1st again!

Skye also had an attempt at Gamblers on Saturday and though we had a great opening, he did not get the distance challenge, which was to go through a tunnel, then push out about 18 feet to a set of weaves, then a jump. Skye instead flipped back into the tunnel.

Rip ran 3 runs on Saturday. He started with Standard and wow he was wound up. It started with a very obvious (so I thought) sequence of jump, jump, AFrame. He did the 2 jumps, then shot off about 30 feet to a tunnel. I got him back on the frame, and then instead of going straight to a jump then weaves, he went back for that tunnel! Once we got past that it went well, except that he launched his dogwalk contact into another awaiting tunnel. No shortage of enthusiasm though!

Rip also had a Gamblers run and he did a good job in the opening, though he did pop one set of 12 poles. He got the Gamble for a "Q" and his Starters Gambler title!

At the end of the day we ran Pairs with Jan and her speedy border collie Meg again. Rip really likes Meg. We had a great run with the fastest Pairs time in Starters, though Rip knocked a bar so we got 2nd place.

Sunday brought just 2 runs for Skye. He did Standard first thing and had a nice run. We got 2nd place by just 2/10ths of a second. Later he did Snooker and we were trying to get a Super Q. Something completely unexpected happened though - when we started, I was going for the red jump in the back and while trying to keep Skye off the nearby jump, he veered off and climbed the AFrame which was NOT PART OF THE COURSE. Course builders had set the frame at the edge of the ring, still inside, and I didnt consider that Skye would go over there. It wasnt blocked in any way, so he wasted about 3 or 4 seconds doing that and getting back to me. That was enough to cause us to run out of time just before he was taking the final #7 jump in the closing. It cost us the Super Q and at first I was pretty mad that the frame was left on the course like that, all setup, but really, Skye should have just stayed with me like I was telling him.

Rip had a great Standard run to start the day, and he hit both his contacts, but he knocked 2 bars during the run. Maybe he was still a little sore from whatever he did to his leg Thursday. We also did a very short 2 obstacle Snooker run. He turned the wrong way when I FC'd the weaves and went back through pole 1/2 to get to me. We ran Jumpers at the end of the day and he ran a smokin run but again knocked 1 bar in an otherwise great performance.

I came away with a few things to work on of course and generally had a good time. I would have really liked to have earned a gamble or the snooker for Skye to get us that closer to Perf. ADCH, but it will have to wait !

Rip and Kaylen - Border Collie Races!

2009-12-08T00:26:00.000-07:00

Rip's runs from AKC at Latigo

2009-12-03T23:18:00.000-07:00

Here are Rip's 3 runs that were taped from this weekend's trial.

Skye's runs from AKC at Latigo

2009-12-02T11:21:00.001-07:00

Here are most of Skye's runs from the AKC show. Rip's runs to come soon.

Skye qualifies for AKC Nationals and Rip gets a Title!

2009-11-30T16:57:00.004-07:00

I like this annual 3 day AKC trial after Thanksgiving as it's close to home and I've got the time off anyway. Skye and I were going into this trial needing just 25 more Mach points to qualify for AKC Nationals. Note to self - next year do a couple more AKC trials so we dont come down to the last weekend to try and earn those points!

I am really happy to say that we got those 25 points! Actually, we got 31 points, so 6 to spare, HA! We managed to only get 2 Q's this weekend, on different days, so no double Q's this time. We were clean in Friday's JWW run, and then first thing on Saturday in STD, so then I could run and it didn't really matter as we had met our goal. I was pushing a little more than usual so I caused a bar to come down in each of our other JWW runs, but they were very nice. Our STD run on Sunday was great except for a missed dogwalk contact. Friday's STD was a mess - Skye checked his focus at the gate so yee haw!

So, on to Rip's weekend performance. My Rip boy ran very well for me this weekend and though we only came away with one Q out of the 4 runs, I feel like we were connected and both had a good time. If you read my last post about contacts you will note that I had started to introduce a 2on2off in practice. It's still at a very early stage, and I am only doing 2o2o with the dogwalk. I am Thrilled to say that Rip hit BOTH dogwalk contacts in his standard runs. He had not hit one in any prior run. Now, since neither STD run was a Q, we did manage to find other small issues. In Saturday's standard run, he stepped on the broad jump. That was his only fault on an otherwise great run, but its equivalent to dropping a bar, so NQ. In Saturday's JWW run, he did great and Q'd, earning his Novice Jumpers title and letting us move to Open for Sunday.

On Sunday, Rip's standard run was nice, though he came off the side of the teeter and then hit turbo boost and launched his AFrame contact. Still though, he was running fast and with lots of enthusiasm. In our first Open Jumpers course, I didnt support a jump enough for him after I front crossed, causing him to come around it, and then he backjumped it instead.

So a fun filled weekend with goals met - cant beat that! Lots of good friends there to cheer on and some who just came along to cheer for us! The weather even turned out great.

I will have video to post soon.

What is this "touch" you speak of?

2009-11-05T23:55:00.004-07:00

I haven't had any agility trials since early October and my next one isn't until the weekend after Thanksgiving, and add to that a vacation last month, and there hasn't been much to write about.

The Thanksgiving trial is a 3 day AKC event where Skye is going to earn his last few points he needs to qualify for Nationals in March.

Our vacation to Florida preempted my thoughts on going to the Cynosport games, USDAA's Championship event. Skye is fully qualified and I had intentions on going, but due to the expense and vacation time used for our Florida trip, it will have to wait until next year (unless USDAA does actually move the event to the east coast). Instead I will follow along online and I wish everyone the best in their runs!

So, an update on Mr Rip's flying contacts. Ok, I admit defeat, at least for a little while. Though Rip has been hitting his AFrames in competition and in practice, he has YET to actually hit the yellow on a dogwalk in competition (though he's only done about 4 trials). I can also get Mr Confidence to leap at the halfway point of the down ramp in practice.

Now, I am happy with his speed and enthusiasm in running his dogwalk, but rather than tightening up his stride and getting more consistent with the contacts, he has been extending out and seriously jumping, flying well over the contact. Because of this, I have started teaching him a 2o2o position with a "touch" command. It's not something he has learned before, because right from the start, he only understood that you run on the board. He's starting to get the point, and I will be working in this Stop on the dogwalk for the foreseeable future. When he gets the complete understanding and can do the stop reliably, I expect I will transition that to a quick-release. At some point, I will come back to running his dogwalks, but for now he just doesnt get the point of the contact zone.

Rip is also entered in the Thanksgiving AKC trial, and unfortunately we cannot "train" in the AKC ring, so if he misses, then he misses. Its not really his fault, so I don't expect I will down him or carry him off. Likely I will just verbally mark the miss with an "Uh Oh" and pause our progress, then finish the course.

Rip has been learning some new tricks like "spread em" where he stands up against a wall while he gets "frisked", and I have been trying to teach him to stand on his hind legs and walk forward. These have the benefit of strengthening his back and back legs too!

I'm back

2009-10-24T21:20:00.004-06:00

Back from 9 days away for vacation. The pups are incredibly happy to see us after having given up hope on our return. We have a new addition to our family that we picked up in Indiana too - I will try to get a picture of him posted here. While we were gone, it snowed here, and though most of it is gone and today was 60 degrees, there is more in the forecast for tomorrow. Ugh. Doesn't bode well for outdoor training - glad to have the indoor facility!

So, no matter how bad your day/week was, it probably wasnt as bad as the owner of this car we saw on the ride back. I was mr. fast-with-the-camera for this one:

Rip is Two

2009-10-14T15:23:00.002-06:00

Rip's birthday was last Sunday - my boy is 2. I decided to weigh him today and he's actually gained some weight - he is at 43.2 lbs now. Maybe that is due to his stealing Skye's breakfast the last couple days, or the different food that he's been getting. Either way, his shape looks good and I dont really feel backbone now when petting him. I dont mind feeling some ribs, but I dont want to feel backbone.

We have just 1 more trial this year, just after Thanksgiving, and then it's going to be time to have him neutered. ..

AKC in the cold at Brighton, CO

2009-10-12T23:46:00.004-06:00

Fortunately we had an indoor trial this weekend at the Adams County Fairgrounds in Brighton. It was soooo cold, the high temperature on Saturday was something like 25 degrees. While driving up, we saw many accidents and at one point on I-25, there was a pile up with at least 12 cars smashed and in the ditch, including a police car. We made it OK though a little late, and I had to run Skye with the 20A group.

I am disappointed in my handling of Skye this weekend. We seldom have offcourses, but on both of our JWW runs, I took my eyes off him and he grabbed an off course jump. Since I wasnt actually seeing him take the wrong jump, I KNOW I wasn't watching him! Lesson learned the hard way.

We had a good Standard run on Saturday but he pulled his famous take-the-tunnel-instead-of-AFrame maneuver. The setup made the tunnel the obvious choice for the dog, so I cant blame him too much - a lot of dogs got that offcourse, but I did make sure to get his attention before it, and he took off anyway.

Our Standard run on Sunday was clean, though we had a slow sit on the table, and I over handled the dogwalk/tunnel discrimination - I wasn't going to lose yet Another Q due to that. The courses this weekend seemed to be wheeled really tight, thus the times allowed didn't provide the normal cushion, and we ended up with a Standard Q but only 10 MACH points (our usual is 20).

So this leaves me still needing 25 points to qualify for AKC Nationals. We have 1 more AKC show after Thanksgiving, so I have 6 runs to get the points. It shouldn't be a problem. I hope. Fingers crossed.

Mr Rip had a good weekend. He ran two great JWW runs. On Saturday, he dropped one bar at the jump after the tunnel, but he ran fast and accurate - no bobbles and his weaves were great. He actually had the fastest time on Saturday of all Novice JWW dogs by 5 seconds. On Sunday, he got the JWW Q with a tougher course than Saturday's. It had pinwheels and more side changes. He was the fastest of all the Novice JWW dogs by 3 seconds.

Our Standard runs were actually really nice too, though he absolutely launched his dogwalk contacts in both runs. I mean, he left from halfway down the board. His running dogwalk has deteriorated so much its just not funny. I am still training with the hoop, and I need to do lots more repetitions and I am going to change a couple things as Katrina suggested. If he doesn't hit any in the November competition, I will have to make some more drastic decisions on his contacts. I do not want to have to go to 2-on-2-off, but if thats where I need to be to help him understand, so be it. For now, I am going to have to put him on the dogwalk at least every day, and I may do a couple of 2 minute sessions a day. He loves to work for the squeaky ball and I dont think this will be overdoing it for him. Besides, I have a vacation coming up at the end of the week and he's going to get a whole week off any agility anyway.

I will post some video soon.

Ha!

2009-10-08T14:12:00.000-06:00

Rip's USDAA Video

2009-10-07T23:52:00.000-06:00

Here's the video of Rip from the USDAA trial in Fountain.

USDAA in Fountain, CO with the boys

2009-10-06T20:24:00.003-06:00

I ran Skye and Rip in this local USDAA trial (only a 40 minute drive). We did not enter Friday's team events.

Since there have been so many trials in a row, and with the expense of entering 2 dogs, I only entered select runs for both dogs, thus I played in Gamblers, Snooker and Jumpers on both days with both dogs, and did Pairs with Rip. No Standards or tournaments this time. I was trying to still avoid dogwalks for Rip until I think he will hit at least 50% of them in competition.

So, Saturday was a pretty good day. Skye got a tough gamble with a send to a jump straight away from a teeter, where the gamble line was before the fulcrum of the teeter. He also Q'd his Jumpers run with a 1st place in the dark - the trial ran sooooo late, that it was nearly dark (7pm with no lights) when we ran it. He had his own idea for Snooker and took an offcourse jump instead of coming to me when I called him, and we thus joined the Zero Point Club for snooker. I also managed to take a spill during the gamblers run and wipe out a jump. I was fine and popped back up, but the little bit of time and downed jump cost me 1st place (3rd instead). Video to come :)

On Saturday, Rip also Q'd his gamblers run. The Starters gambles are not very tough, but Rip works away from me better than Skye does, so I expect gamblers will not be an issue. Rip also had a very nice Snooker run and was the only big dog to finish the closing. We did 7/7/6 as it was the most logical sequence in keeping good flow. He knocked one bar in his otherwise very nice jumpers run. Rip-boy is a lot of fun!

Sunday was not quite as successful for us, though not too bad. In Skye's gamblers run, I didnt think we had a chance, so it was just a warmup for the other runs of the day. Only 10 of the 70+ masters level dogs got the gamble successfully, and we were not one of them. It was offside weaves, with a flip around to the chute, then over a jump. The gamble line kept you behind pole 6 and when I stopped, Skye came out of the weaves to me as expected. We did a little bit better in Snooker but Skye ended up ahead of me and took an offcourse tunnel in the opening. Our Jumpers run was last and we had a good run with 1st place again. There were quite a number of scratches on Sunday as the weather was cold (40 degrees) and cloudy most of the day.

With Skye's performance this weekend, we are now only 2 Gamblers and 1 Snooker Super Q away from our Performance ADCH.

Rip's Gamblers run was, if I do say so, rather unfair. It was not setup as indicated on the course map and instead put the dog coming out of a tunnel under the AFrame facing right at an offcourse jump. I tried to get ahead and grab him coming out of the tunnel and it was ugly, but I kept him off the offcourse jump, but when then sending him to the finish jump, he dropped the bar. We got the "hard part" but it was not a fair setup for young inexperienced dogs and/or handlers as it gave a high chance of collision between dog and handler, or just take the offcourse.

Rip's Snooker run was fairly shortlived as he did the 7pt weaves but after the first jump of the 4pt combo, he spotted a tunnel that he just HAD to take. He was rather giddy about it too.

We ran pairs with Jan and her border collie Meg who Rip really likes. Unfortunately, he picked this run to forget how to complete 12 weave poles. I got pop outs 3 times, so I just went on and took the "E" for the team. Every other set of weaves he did this weekend were perfect.

In Rip's Jumpers, we took 1st with a nice run. I need to learn to push him to go faster though - I want to bring out even more speed in the Starters / easier courses so we can be ready for the big 22" speed demon class when we make it to Masters.

So, all in all a good weekend. Rip did miss one AFrame contact, and we didnt do ANY dogwalks so no misses there :)

Videos to follow.

New agility pictures

2009-10-02T16:02:00.004-06:00

I bought some great pictures of Rip shot by Kelli of Stover Photography as well as a picture of Skye from Tien Tran.

I love Rip's eyes in this one.

There's my long outstretched boy!

Floating over the AFrame

A little intense leaving the table!

Skye's runs from AKC FRAAD

2009-10-01T09:37:00.001-06:00

Here's Skye's runs from the AKC trial

Skye's and Rip's AKC Report

2009-09-28T20:10:00.003-06:00

We did the 3 day AKC trial at Castle Rock this weekend. Friday was Excellent only, so I left Rip home with Katrina who couldn't come. Skye and I ran Exc. A FAST and managed to get the distance challenge and enough points for 1st place. Skye doesn't do distance very well, so I am always happy when we get one of these or a gamble in USDAA.
We had a great run in JWW and got a Q and 10th place (of about 45). Our Standard was nice and Soooo close to a Q. I had to call Skye off the wrong end of a tunnel and he called off, but then didnt immediately take the correct end, so we earned a refusal.

On Saturday, I was running Rip in his first AKC trial as well as Skye, so I chose to not run FAST which would have introduced too many conflicts. Skye again had a great JWW run with a Q and 11th place, but we were only 2 seconds behind the 1st place dog Summit. Our Standard run was great Except where I bobbled the weave entry and caused Skye a refusal. We were otherwise clean.

Rip had a great run in JWW for his debut, and got 1st place. The surface was lousy as the outdoor ring they were supposed to use was a mud pit, so they setup the course on the packed dirt parking lot. I slipped a few times and I could see Rip slipping as well, but we did OK. Rip's Standard run was pretty good with a few oops's. He was called for his dogwalk contact, and also had a table fault and then he threw in a little offcourse by doing the chute a second time. He ran nicely though, and I really cant complain about his performance. He nailed two fast weave entries, unlike a lot of the Novice dogs.

Sunday was Skye's day with a Double Q, number 12 for us. He had a fabulous JWW run and earned us the most MACH points (15) in a jumpers run that we have earned to date. I think we were 7th place, but not far behind 1st. He had a nice solid Standard run too. We now need just 35 points to qualify for the 2010 AKC Nationals, and we have a 2 day and a 3 day AKC trial coming up before the cutoff.

Rip had a beautiful fast Standard run on Sunday. We again got called for our dogwalk contact, though I thought he was in, and that was our only fault. We were 10 seconds faster than the next fastest dog, though I think there were only 8 dogs in the class.
Our JWW run was going great but when we got to the weaves (I hate having only 6 poles!), he popped out at pole 4 so I brought him back to them (he grabbed a bonus offcourse jump in the process) and then he again popped out pole 4, so I ended our run there - dont want to reinforce the redo-the-weaves that I had so much trouble with when Skye first started competing. Up until that point though he was running nicely, with great startline stay and reading my rear cross.

All in all a great weekend at AKC.

Some video of Rip and Skye at USDAA

2009-09-17T09:24:00.000-06:00

Here is some video of Rip from USDAA.

Here is some video of Skye:

Rip and Skye play USDAA at the Denver Regional

2009-09-14T09:25:00.005-06:00

This past weekend was the USDAA Regional held in Brighton, CO. I had entered both Rip and Skye in the trial. It was to be Rip's first USDAA, and we were jumping in with both feet as I had entered him in DAM Team with two other young dogs. Our team name was fittingly "Black and White and Green". Skye was to be on a PVP team with Susan Anderson's Belgian Sheepdog Ring, however the night before the trial, Susan's back went out and she couldnt make it to the trial. Skye was re-assigned to the one dog who did not have a PVP partner. Skye did not need the Q, as we had already qualified back in January.

First Skye - he did pretty well this weekend, though I have been getting a little frustrated with some of his antics. For the Team runs, he did OK in Gamblers, but popped out of the weaves costing us some points. In team Standard, he took the wrong end of a tunnel for an offcourse. I set a good line for him and he veered off anyway. Team snooker was short lived - he started by taking the tunnel under the AFrame for 2pts rather than the 7pt aframe (I am SOOOO sick of his grabbing the tunnels under contact equipment when I am clearly indicating the contact), we then did the set of 3 jumps for 6pts and he shot back over one of the 6pt jumps to end our run. He had a decent run in team Jumpers, but then in the team Relay, he was the only dog to take the offcourse jump setup after the teeter.
In Skye's non-team runs, he did well. We did have a bit of a mess in Saturday's Standard run with a missed dogwalk contact, missed teeter contact and a dropped bar. Sunday's Standard run was nice with a 1st place. We did Snooker on Sunday and he had a nice run with 3 7's (could have gone for 4 reds but didnt try). We ended up in 3rd just missing a super Q by about 3 seconds as 2 other dogs did 3 7's faster than us. Also on Saturday, we ran round 1 of the Perf. Grand Prix. We already had a bye to round 2, so this was a no pressure run. We were clean and got 1st place (only 6 of the 24 performance dogs Q'd this Grand Prix). On Sunday we ran the Perf. Grand Prix finals and again Skye grabbed an offcourse tunnel rather than the dogwalk. Looking at the tape, I was clear in my signal - he just isnt listening/watching during these discriminations. He is going to be seeing A LOT of them in his future in the training field.

Ok, so the Rip boy.... I was very pleased with Rip's performance this weekend. First off, since our contacts are not even close to being solid, I was not surprised to have him miss. He missed probably all of his dogwalks, and a few of his AFrames, sometimes spectacularly! I am determined that I can get his running contacts to be solid and consistent. He really strides through them with the hoop during training and his positioning is excellent - I just need to get that to transition to no hoops and have it hold up in trials. (I know, easier said than done).
So, in Rip's team runs, he only went offcourse once, and it was in Jumpers when he ran by a jump and when I went to bring him back to it, he backjumped. He missed 2 dogwalks in his Gambler run, but got 2 AFrames. We just missed getting our closing points as he went by the finish jump and before I could get him over it, the buzzer went. His team Standard was a bit of alphabet soup with faults, but no offcourses. His team Snooker was great (we didnt get it on tape though, bummer!). He actually got a placement - 12th place out of about 80 or 90 dogs, and considering he was not smooth over some of the course, I was very happy with that. The buzzer went as he was in the 7pt weaves in the closing. In team Relay, he knocked a bar and had to redo his weaves but was clean. Our team did not do well, as my teammates green dogs each had E's in Jumpers as well, and one of them went offcourse in Relay. We had fun though!
In Rip's non team runs, he did well. He got a Q in Gamblers and a Q in Jumpers. He seriously jumped his AFrame contact in Sunday's standard run as I tried to front cross before him. He made the judge laugh out loud when he came off the dogwalk and I said "table" and he ran to the table and laid down, on the ground next to the table. I had to get him actually ON the table and have him lay down again. He NQ'd his snooker run as I was having to redo his weaves and he back-weaved. Thats a no-no. His other Standard run was NQ'd due to contacts and an offcourse into the wrong end of a tunnel at the end of the dogwalk that I frantically tried to prevent by running to the end of the DW and front crossing. Bad idea!
Rip had various bars down, but not an excessive amount. I was disappointed in his weaves performance though - he is so solid in practice with both entries and completing them successfully. He missed a few entries in the trial, and popped out almost every first attempt at them. I am sure the trial atmosphere/adrenaline has to do with that, as well as just plain inexperience. Everyone suffers through it - why should we be any different!!
I will have some video to post soon.

At least we got some money out of it!

2009-08-24T23:14:00.005-06:00

Skye and I did the USDAA trial in Laramie over the weekend. It was not nearly as successful as I had hoped for, though there were some bright moments.

On Friday (they started at 4pm), we started with Gamblers and looking at the gamble, I just knew Skye was not going to get it. We were to go over a jump, and then send out to the chute which was out past the teeter. Skye loves the teeter, so I knew that is what we'd get, and we did. I had a nice opening though, with two very nice dogwalks.
We then did Performance Steeplechase and had a really good run and got 1st place.
The last run for Friday was Snooker and it was bad - jump a red, do a jump / 6 poles sequence for the 7pts, and then Skye blew me off and took the offcourse #6 tunnel. 3 obstacles and done. He did give me a very nice leadout though, probably 50ft.

Saturday we only had 2 runs. It was like a very long, drawn out AKC show. In the morning we ran Jumpers, and we really did have a good run but with 1 bar down, so NQ. After waiting 7 hours, I then ran Standard. I was worried about the AF / tunnel discrimination coming off the table so I positioned myself to take the tunnel out of the picture, or so I thought. What I really did was take the tunnel AND Aframe out of the picture and caused Skye to run around the AF into the other end of the tunnel. When he came out, I told him to climb up, and he went back into the tunnel, so I told the judge we were done and we left. I was really mad until I looked at the tape and saw it was mostly my fault.
I elected to not run Perf. Grand Prix on Saturday as we already are qualified and had a 1st place bye from Pueblo.

On Sunday we had 3 runs scheduled, plus the 2nd round of Steeplechase.
We ran another round of Standard, and this time had a nice run, but we got called for the dogwalk contact. It required a 90 degree turn off the dogwalk to a jump and many dogs left early.
We then had pairs and ran with Doc and Kai - a pretty reliable team. We fortunately ran this clean and got the Q. That's our 5th pairs Q meaning I don't need any more for Performance ADCH. I am very happy about that as I really dont like running Pairs since Skye is a jerk to 90% of the dogs out there. I always have to manage him and make sure he doesn't try to go after my pairs partner dog.
Next was Round 2 of Steeplechase. There were 3 other 22" P dogs running and we ran last. The first two dogs got offcourses and the dog that ran before me was called for the AFrame contact. In reality, we could run conservatively and should still be faster than those other 3 dogs by an easy margin. This course called for 2 AFrames, and as we approached the first one, Skye more or less stopped short in front of it and wouldn't go up. WTF. I told him again a couple times to climb it and finally he did. I am sure we wasted about 3 or 4 seconds on that, but it seemed like an eternity. We ran the rest of the course fine, and had no faults so YEA!! we got 1st place and a check for $21 in winnings.
To finish the day, we got another Snooker course. I felt good about getting all 7's in this one (7pt was a spread out serpentine of jumps). We were going great until Skye dropped the bar on the 3rd red jump. I then had to think about what to do and try to make it to the close, but Skye took one of the jumps in the serpentine so we were done.

Not sure what has happened to our Snooker runs lately. Before it seemed like we Q'd every one we ran, but I think I've managed to NQ the last 4 or 5.

Rip running contact training

2009-08-18T13:07:00.002-06:00

Since we did the DOCNA trial a couple weeks ago and missed most of our contacts, I have gone back to really reinforcing them using a hoop at the bottom. Initially I had trained him to hit the "box" that I placed on the contact zone, but as his confidence built up, that deteriorated.
I am going to see if I can rely on muscle memory to get a consistent performance. I have tried to run him over his contacts every day. I have a little more than 3 weeks before his next trial - his DAM team at the Rocky Mountain USDAA Regional.

Here is a video of our training. I think his dogwalk is looking AWESOME.

Rip is on a DAM team!

2009-08-08T00:14:00.005-06:00

I've decided to enter Rip on a DAM team at our upcoming September (11-13) Regional event! I have no expectations of a Q, nor does the rest of our team as we all have inexperienced young dogs. In fact, that inspired our team name "Black and White and Green". We will join Mary w her border collie Split and Val with her smoothcoat border collie Trickster for a fun, no pressure, lets-get-experience team. If we can run clean, it will be interesting to see how our times stack up to the Masters dogs.

Skye is also on a PVP team with Susan Anderson's dog Ring. We are both pretty consistent, and Ring needs the Q for Nationals (Skye qualified in January), so hopefully I can help Susan out. Since Skye is mostly white and Ring is all black, I came up with the team name Ying and Yang. If you are not familiar with that, its typically represented by this symbol:

Rip's Debut!

2009-08-02T22:35:00.005-06:00

This weekend Rip and I did a DOCNA trial as his agility debut. He did a great job!

We had some issues as expected, but overall he was fast, enthusiastic, and had a good time. My Rip boy is the best! We MUST do about 100 more repetitions with the hoop on the AFrame though. He missed most of his AFrames, though on the plus side, he did hit almost all of his dogwalks.

A couple times he thought the dogwalk was the teeter, so he slowed at the top before realizing it was the DW. We had a few run-by's on jumps, but that's OK - its my handling that I need to adjust as Rip is not Skye.

We only Q'd 2 of our 8 runs, missing a couple due to dropped bars (in jumpers) and a couple due to jumped contacts (Standard), but all the runs were great.

Here is a video of some of them. Check out those weaves - love my 2x2 trained boy!

Rip jumps 26"

2009-07-31T09:51:00.002-06:00

It's likely that Rip's official height measurement will be somewhere over 21". In USDAA, this puts him in the tallest group of dogs where he would jump 26" in the championship division. I already have Skye in the Performance division, so I do want to compete with Rip in Championship. This is his first time trying any jumps over 22". He knocked a few bars as could be expected, but generally he did great and looks natural jumping that high.

I have also realized that we have an issue with running through a "box" of jumps. Rip wants to veer off and take the offcourse jump even though I am signaling him to continue straight through. We will have to work on this.

Rip's first trial is in a DOCNA show this weekend - I expect that he will do fine.

Wow what an AKC weekend.

2009-07-20T10:03:00.004-06:00

Skye and I had an awesome weekend at the 3 day MHGRC (Mile High Golden Retriever) AKC trial at Castle Rock.

In a first for me, we went 6/6, earning 3 double Q's in the process.

This puts us at 7 QQs for 2010 Nationals, so we are qualified on the double Q front, but I still need about 100 points to reach the required 400.

We also earned our MX title this weekend! Very cool!

We are now standing at 10 QQs, so halfway to MACH. I am very happy with our progress towards our MACH, as we only got into Exc B in both Std and JWW last October.

In another first, Skye and I participated in a demo run of "Run and Done" or RAD, a new class that AKC is trying out. This was the first run of this class anywhere in the country. About 55 dogs participated. It's similar to USDAA's Steeplechase, in that the course is designed for speed, and you may need to do either the weaves or the AFrame twice. It's also open to entry regardless of what level you normally compete at (ie Novice and Open may enter).

We unfortunately had an offcourse jump after #3, but were otherwise clean in this run - it was pretty cool.

Here is the course we ran:

In another 1st, I decided to have Rip measured by our local AKC judge Beth G. while at the trial. The poor boy was so scared & stiff. We have a wicket at home and I have tried before to get him use to it with no success. We tried treats and massage and such but the boy just would not relax. She took a measurement that she knew was not right - at 19.5 inches. We were talking about tips to get a real measurement and how to get him use to this for a little while, and he did relax a bit so without him really knowing, she measured him again and got 21.5 inches (though the measure form had 19.5 written already). I am sure the 21.5 is much closer to reality as I've gotten 21" at home. Of course, at USDAA that will put him in the 26" jumping group. I havent tried jumping him that high, but he really is built for it, with his long/lean body. I may have to give it a try.

Finally, in a segment I will call "Oh, Come On!" (OCO)....

I mentioned above that I got Skye's MX this weekend. I usually am not too excited about the ribbons, but I wanted to get this title ribbon. I didnt see any in the self serve area so I asked, and they pointed me to them. Oh, Come ON!!! This cheezy, cheap-ass 8" strip of purple and white is my MX:

I mean really, there were over 1800 runs this weekend, and I paid an average $14 per run, so they took in over $25,000 for this trial. Yes, you have facility rental, judges, food worker coupons, and a host of other charges (I know, we run trials), but this is what you are going to pass off as title ribbons?? Cheap!

Back to your regularly scheduled program....

Rip meets his brother Kelty

2009-07-13T09:49:00.004-06:00

Rip's brother Kelty came to Colorado from his home in Texas this past weekend. Kelty's dad Bruce brought him by for a border collie play day. Also in attendance was Bruce's other dog Zip, as well as Sarha with her dogs Ace and Wit. It was a lot of fun and everyone got along.

Wit and Zip chillin

Kelty checks out his sister Rush

Rip & Ace

Rip & brother Kelty

Zip

Handsome boy Kelty

Final day, USDAA Brighton

2009-07-05T16:20:00.003-06:00

Today we finished up the USDAA trial and it was a so-so day for us. We only ran 3 runs (Snooker, Steeplechase round 2, Pairs)

In Snooker, we had a decent plan on a 3 or 4 red course. We did 5/6/6/7 in the opening and everything went smoothly, and in the close we finished the AFrame which was number 5 and Skye drove straight ahead and took on offcourse jump rather than stay with me and go to the tunnel. We still got a Q due to our number of opening points, but no SQ. If we could have continued and finished out with the #6 and #7, we would have had 1st place (of all the 22" and 16" performance dogs) and earned that last SQ. As we only had 5 22" dogs, we were combined with the much larger 16" class for SQ placement.

Steeplechase round 2 was interesting. I ended up caught in a web of controversy. We ran a nice course and on our 2nd pass at the AFrame (3rd obstacle from the end), Skye came with me instead of climbing it, and stepped 2 feet into the tunnel below it (see any consistent theme for this weekend? Guess what we will be training). So anyway, when he stepped in the tunnel, we got whistled off with an Elimination. As I was walking back to our chairs, Stacy Peardot-Goudy stopped me and said I should check with the judge as she believes the offcourses in Steeplechase are judged using Starters rules, which means its a 5pt fault since he didnt go in with 4 feet, but not an E, and I could have finished out the course. After the last 22" dog ran, I asked the judge and she said no, it is only 1 paw on the obstacle and I am E'd, so then Kent Mahan, also a USDAA judge who was sitting next to us, agreed with Stacy that it is not an E, so we checked with the judge from the other ring, and she agrees with the first judge, that it IS an E. So OK, what is it?? Anyway, since the 2 judges presiding at the show say its an E, then that's what I get and no re-run. Stacy is going to bring it up with the USDAA committee and make sure that all judges are made clear on this - whatever the real decision is. Stacy P-G is the USDAA world team coach, so you might think she would know what she's talking about!

Then finally we ran our Pairs run. My partner Marrin and Bren went first and wouldn't you know, they had an offcourse at the 2nd obstacle. It was jump, into the far side of the tunnel, and Bren took the wrong entry.
My 2nd half of the course was run clean, so I give us a 1/2 Q for that run, but USDAA isnt going to count it as anything!

So, this weekend I only ended up with a Steeplechase Q and a Snooker Q. I have some items to work on in training in the coming weeks for sure. Our next USDAA is in Laramie WY next month, but in the meantime we have 2 AKC trials coming up later in July.

I may post some video later..

I really should have know better...

2009-07-04T16:08:00.002-06:00

Against my better judgment, I entered Skye in a few runs for this weekend's USDAA trial outdoors in Brighton. Last year, this was our Regional, over the July 4th weekend, and last year the temps were high 90's to low 100's.

Skye really runs poorly & slow in the heat, so I thought if I only entered him in the first 2 classes of the day, we'd be done early before the day really heated up. I am closing in on my Performance ADCH so I really didnt want to skip the trial altogether.

On Friday, we only ran Gamblers (first thing) and Standard. Well, we missed the gamble, and I know its a lack of training for distance challenges when he comes blindly out of a tunnel. He seems to always suck back to me after the tunnel instead of staying straight and driving to the next obstacle. We had a decent opening and would have had 1st if we got the gamble. Then we ran Standard, but as it turns out, it was AFTER they ran 80 dogs in Grand Prix, along with a 1/2 hour delay due to someone falling and breaking their ankle (hope you are better Judy!). This put my Standard run starting at about 2:00pm, with the temp at 85 degrees and humid. Skye ran most of it OK, a little slow, but after the table there was a U shaped offcourse tunnel wrapped under the AFrame, so the dog had the choice of 2 tunnel entrances and the AF. Skye practically pushed me out of the way to get an offcourse on the tunnel. So Friday was a bust.

Today (Saturday) we signed up for the first 2 classes - Standard and Snooker, along with Perf. Steeplechase, as we still need that to qualify fully for Championships. The day started off cool, and we ran Standard pretty early. Guess what, there's another f'n U shaped tunnel under the AF again. This was a pretty tough course and we had it except wouldnt you know, the (free to good home) Skyeboy found a way to mess this up again! I positioned a cross after a jump to really ensure he would get on the AF, and he did, and as I went to go to the other side of it, he jumped off and into the tunnel. Tweeeeeettt. Grrrr. Damnit. Put him back on the AF and we finished clean.
We then ran Perf. Steeplechase and had a nice run - not his fastest, but still good, that is until he popped out of the weaves at the 10th pole. Can we waste anymore time here!! Back to the weaves, he gets them the second time and we finish clean (and we got our last Q for Champs, yeah!). We JUST squeaked into the 2nd round for tomorrow with our 7 or 8 seconds wasted with weaves.
Then came Snooker and it sucked. I changed my plan from what I was initially going to do, and we got the opening, but I had to tell Skye 3 times to weave the 6 stinking weave poles in the 7pt combination. He is really aggravating me with the "I don't want to" attitude about weaving, and it wasnt very hot today, maybe 77, though it was humid. We got 5/7/7/ in the opening, and he didnt push out to the #2 in the closing, just staying by my side so we were done. I doubt we could have made it past #6 with all the time wasting at the weaves anyway.

So, we have another go at it Sunday. I signed up for the first 2 runs - Snooker again, and Pairs, and now we have Round 2 of Steeplechase. I'm hoping for a better day!

Video from AKC at Castle Rock, June 2009

2009-06-26T14:06:00.002-06:00

Here are the runs from our June AKC trial. We managed to finish our Open FAST Title (they dont have many trials with Fast here). We did not Q our first Exc. A FAST run.
On Saturday we had a couple nice runs and got a Double Q - our 7th. Just two more to qualify for Nationals, though we are only a little over halfway on points.
We Q'd one other JWW run, but our NQ runs were not bad and Skye was running fast especially in the Standard classes.
I'm just one STD Q away from our MX now.
We have two upcomming AKC trials in July.

Video from our Pueblo USDAA in May

2009-06-25T09:25:00.003-06:00

I am finally getting around to putting the videos together of our last couple trials.
This one is from the USDAA in Pueblo. On Saturday, the weather was cool, a little rainy, and completely cloudy - perfect weather as far as Skye is concerned. He had a lot of fast runs with some 1st places.
Sunday was back to normal Pueblo May weather, with sunshine and temps in the 90's. Skye was a lot slower but still ran OK for me.
We got 1st place in Performance Grand Prix so we have a bye to the 2nd round at our Regional.

Twins?

2009-06-15T23:11:00.003-06:00

Rip was rather, ahem, excited, to have his picture taken with Propel, a young (almost 2yr old) border collie that looks just like him. We should have taken a side view, as they have very similar faces from the side. Propel belongs to Caitlin Ascher who has had great success running her other dog Gadget.

An Ear-y feeling and AKC fun

2009-06-15T20:19:00.004-06:00

Skye and I ran the 3 day AKC trial this past weekend, more on that in a moment.

As I usually do, I brought Rip along to the trial - he gets to meet & greet and socialize. On Sunday, about noon, Rip and I had just come in from a potty trip and when we got up in the bleachers, he was in obvious distress, crying and shaking his head. He was really upset with whatever was in his ear - a bug or something - couldn't tell. As Liz (a vet) was sitting with us, I asked her to see if she could find anything, and she couldn't, but its not like she had a scope or anything with her. Rip settled a little bit, but still kept shaking his head and kept his left ear kind-of pinned back. I put him in his crate so he would just rest. After a while I checked on him and he seemed to feel better but still tilted his head and kept shaking trying to get out whatever went in there. I thought it maybe could be one of those spikey grass seed things, as some of the grass was overly tall due to all the rain lately. So at the end of the day, about 3pm, we decided we would take him over to the emergency vet near the trial site.
Here is what they took out:

Ouch! Poor guy. They had to sedate him to get this piece of evil nature out of his ear. He's OK now. It did not pierce his eardrum.

So, for the trial results.
Skye and I had a very good showing. On Friday, we Q'd our JWW and almost Q'd STD except I gave an inappropriate collection/wrap signal causing him to knock the triple before the weaves. But for that one bar, we almost had a QQ.

On Saturday, we ran Open FAST and got our last Q so we could move to Excellent. Then we ran JWW and got the Q with a nice run. We then ran STD and Q'd that one too, so Yea QQQ day! Two more to go to qualify for Nationals.

Sunday, we ran JWW and three obstacles from the end was a tunnel - should have been an obvious entry for Skye but the bugger cut behind me to take the offcourse entry. Ugh! Then we had STD and Skye was running pretty fast. I gave an early cue to weave while he was still jumping (to avoid an offcourse jump) but that caused him to knock that bar. We finished it out again a bar away from a nice STD Q. We need 1 more STD for MX now, and the next shot is the two trials I have in July.

So, no missed dogwalk contacts again this weekend, and no weave entry or pop-out issues!!

Just because...

2009-05-31T21:50:00.002-06:00

I had the camera out today and got some great pictures of Skye and Rip. Here are a couple that I really like.

Yard gone wild!

2009-05-31T21:07:00.005-06:00

Well, wildflowers anyway. Before I got out the tractor and cut the front yard where we practice some agility, I decided to take pictures of the various wildflowers we have growing this year. Due to consistent rains in May, the yard has exploded in wildflowers. Though I hate to cut them all down, they have yet to invent a mower that will cut the grass and weeds while leaving the flowers.
Here are some pictures of the flora and a few of my "boys" who were helping me...

Rip training update.

2009-05-29T00:02:00.002-06:00

Rip and I have been in our "Young Guns" training class - this is the class for up-and-coming fast, young dogs and handlers who care about the details.
This week we did some jump grids and Rip did a great job adjusting to the spacing of the jumps, as well as his timing to bounce through them.
Rip seems much faster than Skye to me, which, of course, I am happy about. As he gets more confident, he is getting faster. It's going to be great to run this boy in an actual trial.

Since I was so busy last week with my parent's visit and our trial preparations and such, I hadn't had much time to train Rip. I need to keep doing more repetitions with his weaves, as in class he skipped a pole one time and he also came out early. I have to watch the pop-outs, and recently I have made sure to not reward immediately after the weaves, but make him do another obstacle after weaving before rewarding.

Other than working on tightening up Rip's wide turns, my other main concern is to focus on contact performance. I've been using the "box" for training a running contact with his DW and AF, and about 75% of the time his performance is spot-on, however... as Mr Rip is getting quite full of himself and confident, I have been getting some leaping of the contacts. His teeter is great and I haven't had any issue there.

Wow, 5 in a row!

2009-05-28T23:47:00.003-06:00

This past weekend Skye and I attended our club's DOCNA trial. This was our 5th weekend in a row of trialing, and I am looking forward to the next couple of weekends off! My parents were also in town from Massachusetts last week, so it's been rather hectic.

DOCNA is growing in popularity here in Colorado, though we haven't done too much of it other than what our own club offers. I don't find the courses as challenging as in AKC or USDAA, but I do like the different games.
We Q'd all 3 of our Standard runs, 2 out of our 3 Jumpers, our one North American Challenge and some of the games as well.
Our NQ's were due to being over time in the Strategic Gamble and the Traditional Gamble, though we did get the distance challenge. We were also over time in one of the Snakes&Ladders runs due to weave popouts.
Our contacts were great all weekend!

My parents, who are not fluent in agility at all, enjoyed watching me run and the trial environment. They enjoyed the craziness you get to see from the beginner dogs.

All in all, it was a really fun weekend, as the people are great, the judge was very friendly and since the trial was small, the days did not run long.

USDAA in Pueblo, CO

2009-05-18T12:38:00.002-06:00

We had a nice trial in Pueblo last weekend. On Saturday, it was perfect weather for the dogs with clouds and temps in the 40's and 50's (but the people were cold). When its cool out, I tend to get "fast Skye" and he was living up to that this weekend. On Sunday, we started the day with sunshine and a forecasted high of 85, which I know spells trouble for Skye as then we get "its too hot to do agility Skye".

This trial doubles up on the games - 2 Jumpers, 2 Gamblers, 2 Snooker. This makes for a good opportunity to get some of those needed games Q's.

Saturday started off with Jumpers, and my fast Skyeboy got a Q and 1st place. We then ran Snooker and had a nice opening but I was not where I wanted when it came to start the closing and Skye took an offcourse jump behind me.
Next up was Standard and we had another nice run (no contact trouble again!) and we managed a Q with 2nd place. Finally a Standard Q that I have been looking for the last couple trials! This gave us our PD3 title.
We were doing Grand Prix next and Skye was still running nice for me. We Q'd performance Grand Prix and got 1st place! So cool to get that last GP qualifier that we needed for Nationals and have it be a 1st - giving us a bye into round 2 at Regionals.

At this point I had to scramble and leave the trial as my wife and daughter were having their dance recital at 6pm, and with so many dogs at the trial, it was alredy 4pm and we only ran 4 classes. I had to scratch from performance Steelplechase and from Gamblers. Bummer!

Sunday started with Gamblers, and I usually LOVE to start the day with Gamblers, as it lets you run amok and still Q if your dog is having some of the crazies that they can get the first run of the day. When I saw the gamble, I knew we were in trouble - Skye just doesnt have the distance skill to get this particular distance challenge, so I figured we would just run around, do some obstacles and have fun, then I'd send him at the gamble with no expectations.
We ran around, and around, and around - the buzzer never went off signalling the start of the gamble. Ok, so the judge gives me the choice to rerun at the end of the 22" dogs, or just setup and try the gamble - I went for the gamble, and got what I expected (not even close!) and then we left.

We did Standard after Gamblers and it was a nice looking course. We AGAIN got a Standard Q with a nice run - 2nd place too.

Next was Pairs, and I was paired with a guy named Charles with his border collie Ojos. We did a nice job together and got 3rd place with a Q.

At this point, there were no clouds and the sun was baking us. It was definitely mid 80's and hot.

We had Snooker coming up next and there were just 3 reds this time. I had a plan for 3 7's and thought we'd get through it without too much trouble, but in case Skye seemed slow due to the heat, I had a backup plan of 7,7,3. He was running pretty good, the 7pt was a combo of jump/tunnel/jump and we had it. I got the 3 7's, then started the closing. The 5pt obstacles was a set of 6 weaves. Skye hit the entry, weaved 4 poles slowly then came out looking at me like "its way too hot for this dad" so we were done. We would have had it no problem if he just finished those poles! Ugh.

At the end of the day, we had Jumpers again, and even though Skye was running slow and was feeling hot, I figured we'd be fine with just jumps (and a tunnel). I wet him down with the hose they had available, and we ran a decent course, though it was definitely 3 or 4 seconds slower than he is capable of. Still, we Q'd it with 2nd place!

Overall, we got 6/9 Q's.

I am now closing in on my APD (performance ADCH) title. I need 1 more each of Standard, Jumpers, Pairs, Snooker SQ, and I need 3 more Gamblers. In the last 2 trials, I had to scratch from gamblers twice, so that doesnt help!

I dont plan on doing the 3 day USDAA trial on July 4th weekend, as I think I would be dissapointed with Skyes performance in the heat.
Will post video later.

Yes, Its ALWAYS something! Skye USDAA.

2009-05-11T15:34:00.003-06:00

Skye and I had a much better USDAA weekend in Brighton. This was another outdoor trial on grass. We ended up 4 of 8 Q's and I was pretty happy with almost all of our runs.

Of course, lately it seems I cant buy a Standard Q.

On Saturday, we Q'd Performance Grand Prix with a 3rd place (finally a GP Q!!), and we Q'd Pairs with Lorrie & Maxx. Our pairs run may have been fast enough for 1st place but Maxx had 2 refusals so there was some time wasting plus 10 fault seconds added to our time.

On Sunday, we Q'd a tough Snooker course with a 3rd, just missing out on the 2 SQ's they gave out. To end the day, we had a nice Jumpers run and Q'd with 1st place!

Saturday's Standard course had a number of tough elements to it. There were some sharp angles that caused dropped bars, the really tough weave entry (that got Skye and I) , the AF/Tunnel discrimination (that got Skye and I) and quite a few side changes. Only 3 dogs out of 60 Q'd this course!

Sunday's Standard was much more doable, and we had it except that Skye again popped out of the weaves at pole 10. This time I took him back and made him do them again as it seems to be developing into a habit of his.

The good news- Skye again hit all his dogwalk contacts. The bad news- we got called for another AFrame contact.

So, what I am taking away from this trial is:

I realllly need to go back and retrain Skye's weave entries and having him stay in the poles.
Though he loves contacts, I still need to work these contact/tunnel discriminations when he is supposed to do the contact. No assumptions!
I must get back to some distance training. Our Gamblers skills have been lacking.

Always Something!

OTOTD - Odd Thoughts of the Day

2009-05-08T00:46:00.003-06:00

Some odd thoughts of the day...

At least once a day, all the dogs will howl. Usually one of them outside will start it, and the rest of them in the house will join in. I will often join in. Rip has a WoooWoooooWoooo kind of howl, while Skye will bark-howl.
Dogs train themselves to notice certain cues all day. For example, when I end a conference call (I work from home), it seems I will say Ok, Bye a certain way, and then any dogs in my office will get up and be ready to do something, even though I havent yet moved...they just know that I probably will.
Why do some handlers yell "Stay" at the bottom of a contact when they obviously don't mean it?
Our deaf dog Joey hates when I hammer nails while doing home improvement projects. I was replacing a window today, and when I would hammer, he whined and carried on in his crate. He could not see me.
At approximately 3:20 every day, Rip will come and poke me with his nose to tell me its time to play ball.
Bless you folks who have the stick_to_it_ivness to run a dog in agility who gives the impression that sniffing the ground is more fun than agility, or whose attention span is 4 obstacles. I could never do it, and am amazed at the patience of those who can.
Why do we all feel the need to make some hissing sound, or clap, or say "get it" over and over again while our dogs are weaving? Guilty as charged...
I would be fine if I never heard the word "twitter" ever again.
I never before kept a diary or journal or wrote very much until this whole Blogging phase came about. Why is it so interesting, and why do I need to read a bunch of them every day?
What is so satisfying about peeling the green cover off a tennis ball, or dissecting a squeaky toy to take out the squeaker, or tearing newspaper into strips? Dogs do strange things.

Our runs from last week's AKC

2009-05-07T09:00:00.002-06:00

These are the runs that I wrote about in this post:

Rip 2x2 weaves video update

2009-05-06T09:28:00.003-06:00

Here's our latest Rip Weaves update. I love how Rip can independently find his entries!