Skye and Rip do AKC at Latigo, July 2011

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: