Our USDAA Rocky Mountain Regional Report

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.