USDAA Longmont Recap

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.