Raiders Of The Lost Q!

Rip and Skye played USDAA this past weekend. Rip was entered in Friday's DAM team day. Our team name was "Raiders of the Lost Q". There was a pretty healthy entry for team this year with 17 total teams. Our team ended up in 3rd place! Norm and his golden Race'n had a "E" in Team Jumpers, but other than that, we had no other E's and each did well in Gamblers and Snooker too.

Here we are :)

At some point on Friday, Rip hurt his paw or wrist I believe and wasn't running 100%. He wasn't limping, but I could see him favoring his front left foot. On Saturday I scratched him from half his runs, and on Sunday I left him home completely so he could rest.

Skye was not playing team, but I did enter him in 2 runs each day Saturday and Sunday. 

Rip had a good day in Team with placing 3rd in Gamblers out of the 36 dogs in the 22" group, and then placing 5th in Jumpers. In snooker we got 33 points, and ran clean in Standard, but not fast enough for a placement.

Team Gamblers is always interesting because it's not typically a distance challenge and is instead a strategy / time challenge. That was the case this time too - when you heard the buzzer for the close, you could only accumulate points by taking tunnels, with the first tunnel worth 2 points, and each one after that worth 1 more point than the previous. My plan was to get 4 tunnels in the close and we were successful.

On Saturday, Rip ran Jumpers clean first thing in the morning, though he wasn't quite as fast as he should have been. That contributed to scratching him from his next 2 runs. I later ran him in Steeplechase and he was clean, though really slow in his weaves and not driving. We missed the cutoff for a Q and round 2 by 1/2 second.
I also ran him in Grand Prix, and he ran it clean and slow (I didnt have any Grand Prix Q's yet for this qualifying year). He took 5th place of the 34 dogs. After his slow Grand Prix I decided to leave him home for Sunday.

Skye's runs on Saturday were good - he was clean in Jumpers for 3rd place, and got 28 points in Snooker as I messed him up in the close by forgetting what I had planned!

Skye's two runs on Sunday were great with a Q and 2nd place in Gamblers, which is always nice to get since Skye doesnt do distance challenges very well. He would have had first place but he missed his dogwalk contact in the opening so we didnt get those 3 points.

Skye then ran a nice smooth plan in Snooker and got through the finish for 2nd place and a Super Q!

Envy came along all three days and had a great time saying hi to people and playing with other puppies.

Here are a couple of Rip and Skye's runs:
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