Foiled by Fluff

I am a little late on writing this post as I had two trials in a row and somehow lost the time to write about either.

Two weeks ago, we were at an AKC show - it was a three day show but I only did Saturday and Sunday. It's one of the few that offers both FAST and T2B as well as the regular JWW and STD, so with both dogs entered, I had 8 runs a day which is much better than sitting around for two runs per dog!

This turned out to be a really great show for us. If you've followed previous posts, distance challenges found in FAST or Gamblers have never been Skye's cup-o-tea, but he really shined this weekend by getting both of the FAST challenges for Q's! Rip also got one of them.

For T2B, Skye ran clean both days, though not terribly fast, and managed 5 points and 6 points. Rip ran almost clean both days (he missed the AFrame contact on Saturday) and managed 7 points with his Q.

Then, it was time for the regular classes. Saturday was really hot, and though the indoor soccer field turf is a fabulous running surface, the building's ventilation is really bad and not air conditioned, so it was steamy indoors - probably in the neighborhood of 95 degrees inside. That means I have slow dogs. On the bright side, slow dogs tend to be more accurate :)

So, Skye ran clean in both runs for Double Q #19 towards his MACH 2. He had the slowest time in JWW that he's ever had, earning only 3 points - he really does not run in the heat. That meant that Sunday would be our first shot at that MACH 2.

Rip also ran clean in both runs, and though he was not near as slow as Skye, he was still not himself.

On Sunday's regular runs, both dogs Q'd the JWW course in the morning. The temperature had dropped back to a normal 70's area and the dogs were running pretty nice. That meant that Skye would have his shot at MACH 2 at the end of the day when we ran Standard.

Rip was again first dog on the line all weekend (I hate that!), so I got to run the Standard course with him first, and we ran it clean!! That meant we had our first perfect QQ weekend together!

My plan for Skye was the same as with Rip. The run started just fine, but after landing the 5th jump, Skye veered off his line to check a piece of white fluff on the turf - it might have been rabbit fur or something interesting right? So when he looked back at me, he was off his line enough that he missed the next jump. Ugh! Foiled by Fluff! He has never done that in all the years I've been running him.

We don't have another AKC show until the July 21st weekend - it's a local one only 10 minutes from home, so hopefully we can get that MACH 2 there!

On another interesting point, I noticed that while keeping track of points/double Qs for Nationals, that both dogs now have 4 double Qs, but Rip actually has about 20 more points than Skye! We still are only about halfway on points accumulation, so we need to stay consistent if we want to qualify for Nationals in Tulsa next year.

Here's Skye's "Fluff" run:


And here is Rip showing how it's supposed to be done!