USDAA Cynosport "Nationals" 2012

I'm a bit late in writing about my experience at this year's USDAA Cynosport event that took place a week ago. I am fortunate that the event was held just outside of Denver this year, which means I could commute in each day and got to sleep in my own bed. Last year we drove 3 days each way to Kentucky and back to attend our first Cynosport event.

Turns out, the downside to this plan was delivered in the form of nasty traffic and a trip that approached almost 2 hours each way - not something I would repeat! There were a couple days when we did not get home until after 8PM, but it could have been worse, as we had friends who were still running agility then!

The facility in Commerce City was really nice and the rings with the artificial turf surfaces were great. We did have some overnight rains that made the grass rings wet - so wet that ring 5 was never used at all, and the other two grass rings were not used the first day.

For the team events, Rip was teamed with my friend Julie with Rift, and my friend Dale with Chili Pepper. Skye was originally teamed with Sarah and Ayr, but a week before the event, Ayr had an equilibrium issue and ended up having to pull from the event. My wife was in the same situation with Ice, as her teammate's dog had a muscle pull and ended up not running either, so as fate would have it, Skye and Ice ended up on a team with each other again as we did a time or two this year.

When the team events were done, we unfortunately ended up in the middle of the pack with both teams. Rip's team had 3 "E"s, though none by Mr Rip. We had a decent Snooker run with 42 points, a so-so Gamblers run as we were less than a second over time in the close, and then we managed to get through very tough Jumpers and Standard courses, though not without some faults in each.

Rip's best run of the weekend came in the Grand Prix Quarterfinals, where he had a very nice clean run for 21st place, moving us into the Semifinals. In the Semi's, he did not read my signal for the threadle and we ended up with an offcourse, but other than that he really ran great. In the Steeplechase Quarterfinals, we had knocked a bar and then he sliced the broad jump so we did not make it to the next round.

On Skye's team, we ended up with an "E" in jumpers from Skye, and an "E" in Standard from Ice, which put us way out of the running. We did have great runs otherwise and had we not had the "E"s, our times would have put our team in 10th which would have made the finals, but alas that was not meant to be.

In Performance Grand Prix, Skye knocked the first bar. That really sucks to have your chances over on the first obstacle of Grand Prix. He followed that up with a "Skye special" maneuver, where he cuts me off to take the tunnel at the AFrame/Tunnel discrimination. We left the course after that.

Skye had a bye into the semifinal round of Perf. Steeplechase. I couldn't believe it - Skye again knocked the first bar for this run! Un-freakin-believeable. So since he is not blazing fast, that extra 5 penalty points put us out of the running to make finals. In reality, there are a number of dogs running in the P22" group that are very fast and even with our best effort, I don't think we could ever make the Perf. Steeplechase finals.

Skye is a great first agility dog and has accomplished a lot, but I am considering this being his last Cynosport event unless I elect to enter him in the Veterans Overall class next year as he will be 9yrs old then. I will have to evaluate this over the coming year, but I do expect to run him a lot less than Rip.

I have started putting together a "highlights" type video, but don't know when I will get to finish it, so for now, here are a few of our runs from the show: