Skye and Rip play USDAA in the new year!

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 !