Backwards steps for Kaylen

I was hoping that our little Kaylen would maintain the new found confidence that she developed earlier this year with regards to agility training, but it's just not the case. As soon as summer arrived, and the first thunderstorm boomed, I no longer had a dog during class. If we were working indoors on the weave-a-matics, or doing a teeter bang, she was ok but still quite reserved/concerned. Once we headed outside to work on everything else, she completely shut down, and as soon as she was offleash for her turn, she would leave me and go stand by the door or slink away somewhere.
She's developed such a fear again that I must give up her training for the last time and officially assign her the role of border collie pet. She likes frisbee if the sky is clear, and she makes a great lap-collie, but I am afraid thats going to be about it for this ol' girl.

USDAA Rocky Mountain Regional, July 4th weekend

Well the USDAA Regionals are over for another year. All-in-all, Skye and I did OK at our first regional, considering that we dealt with highs in the mid 90's, some east coast type humidity and a lot of conflicts with 3 rings.

My Regionals started off with an Advanced jumpers course that was a lot of fun - I dont think I ever had to walk a course so many times to be sure I would remember it. When it was done, though we knocked 1 bar, we had the 2nd fastest time of about 30 dogs.

We ran Performance Speed Jumping and were fast enough to get into round 2, where Skye decided that he was done weaving for the day (our 7th run on Saturday), so I excused us after the 2nd failed attempt at the damn poles.

We also ran the Performance Grand Prix. We got 4th place with a clean run in round 1. Round 2 didn't go as well, as we got an offcourse jump at the end of the dogwalk.

We did get 2 Q's & 1st place in P2 Snookers which earned our title, so next time we will play P3 in Snooker. We also got a Q & 1st in P2 Gamblers.

We managed to NQ all 3 of our Standard runs (Grrrrrrr). The first one on Friday was a real mess with an offcourse and not completing the weaves after 3 tries. In our second standard run, Skye pulled his famous "seek out the tunnel under the AFrame" maneuver and netted us an offcourse. The third standard run was actually a nice run but I we got called for a dogwalk contact (I swear the contact zones were about 12 inches).

For the team competition (Performance Versatility Pairs), I had partnered with Ana Melara and her young black lab Meg. This is a points accumulation over 5 runs - a Standard, Snooker, Jumpers, Gamblers and a Pairs Relay. We did pretty well as a team, and managed 9th place out of 18 teams. We did get the team Q - they average the top 3 teams' scores and then determine the number of points needed to Q as a percentage of the top 3. Ana & Meg got Eliminated in their Jumpers run, otherwise we would have placed much higher.

So, Skye does not do so well outside in the heat. He was pretty slow overall, with the exception of the first run of each day. Weaves are still a major stress for me and Skye. We will be working on that, incorporating weaves with his favorite game of Frisbee in the front yard - well, maybe his favorite game is "find and chase the rabbit", but I am not sure how to incorporate Frisbee into that one. Also, ol Skyeboy didn't want to down on the table. All 3 times in Standard, it took anywhere from 5 to 10 seconds to get him to lie down - maybe heat related??. We had a couple dropped bars here and there, a couple contacts missed, but generally over the 17 runs we did well, just not fast.

So now we can say that we qualified for all the events at the USDAA Championships (Grand Prix, Steeplechase and Team).

I enjoyed watching the action in the Masters ring with all the fast dogs, especially in the 22" division, with all the "notable" handlers.
Though not many FAAD folks attended, those that did had a good time and were good company.

Greg & Skyeboy

NADAC at El Pomar Park, June 20&21

It was 1 year ago this weekend that Skye and I started trialling in agility. We have accomplished a lot in this last year, and this weekend was just the icing on the anniversary chocolate cake. We played on the short day Friday, and on Saturday.

Somehow, we managed to earn 5 titles while going 7/9 Q's. We finished our Novice Chances and Novice Touch-N-Go titles, which also earned us our Novice Versatility title. Then we had great runs in Open and got our Open Tunnelers and Open Jumpers titles, so we will move up to Elite in those for next time.

Our 2 Elite Standard runs were quite nice. One I got a Q while the other was NQ'd, though the run was still really nice. I had strangers tell me that they enjoyed the runs, which is always a good feeling. I did try to slip and fall on the wet grass during Chances, but caught myself, so not sure it's bloopers worthy.

My Skye-boy had great weave entries all weekend and no pop-outs. We missed one Weavers Q by not doing a leadout and having Skye too far ahead of me coming out of a tunnel, with the weaves being the next obstacle. He went by those and continued into an offcourse tunnel. After bringing him back we kind-of started over, and then it went fine from there.

All in all, we managed 5 1st places, and one 2nd place (Chances doesn't have placements). It was a great "warm up" weekend before the USDAA Regionals in two weeks, and it gives me a good confident feeling going into those.

Greg & Skyeboy