AKC at Castle Rock, April 2010

Here is a cool picture of Rip from his first USDAA trial last October. I was going through Ken Gee's unpurchased photo box and found that one that I had not seen before, so I had to get it!

So, we were at the AKC trial at Castle Rock this weekend, on Saturday and Sunday.
Skye brought his focus this weekend and we managed to Q all our runs, going 4/4 and getting 2 more Double Q's, bringing us ever closer to getting our MACH. He ran fast on Saturday, not quite as fast on Sunday, but still very good. I was happy with his performance on these fairly tough courses.

Some may recall our weave issues from AKC Nationals. Though I didn't mention our trip to a USDAA trial two weekends ago, since getting back from Nationals, he has done his weaves correctly all 13 times he's been given an opportunity to do so! That makes me a little crazy - why couldn't he do them at Nationals? I dont know, but he's doing fine now, so lets go with it.

Rip had a typical Rip weekend, getting no Q's but having a good time trying. He's much closer to success in his JWW runs than Standard. On Saturday in JWW, he popped out of the weaves twice, so we moved on and finished the course. He seemed a bit distracted and un-energetic, but we did have to wait from 7am until 2pm before he got to run his first run. In his STD on Saturday, we had the typical jumped contacts, along with odd distractions causing him to come off the table and head in the opposite direction I was going and other things.

Sunday was a little better - he dropped one bar (again) in JWW on an otherwise nice run. Thats about 5 or 6 runs in JWW where his only issue has been 1 bar. In Standard, he tried much harder and was so close to actually getting a Q. He remembered that we have been working a 2-on-2-off on the dogwalk, and stopped nicely at the end, but by the time we got to the AFrame, he had forgotten again and missed that contact. The rest of his run was clean with no redo's or crazyness.
At least he did not run by any contacts this weekend, and he kept all the bars up except for the one in Sundays JWW.

These were the Excellent courses from Sunday. There were only 15 Q's out of the 75 20" dogs in Standard.




I've decided not to enter Rip in any trials for the next two months so I can really focus on getting a solid 2on2off performance (with speed, no creeping!) and also to do a lot more proofing on his weaves to keep those pop-outs to a minimum. He hits his entries every time, but does tend to then pop out or go slow like he's worried about them. We'll get there!

Greg & Skyeboy & Rip

Belated AKC Nationals report

Its been a little over a week since AKC Nationals wrapped up.

My first Nationals was an experience, mixed with "the thrill of victory, and the agony of defeat" as the beginning of the weekend sports programs used to say.

As you know, I was running Baby for Katrina, as well as running Skye. Running Baby was a lot of fun, and we were really sooo close to being right there with the best of them. In Friday's State team tournament, Baby and I managed to be 4th place for Colorado (there were just over 50 Colorado dogs). She ran really well for me - we would have been in 1st for Colorado except for her missing a weave entry (which she never does).

On Saturday, the day started with Standard and we had a beautiful run. Unfortunately, Katrina had to tell me that we got called for the dogwalk contact.
Saturday afternoon's JWW was the only run where Baby did not run connected for me - she was searching around for Katrina while we were warming up, and then she did it a few times while running too. This caused a refusal since she wasn't paying attention! Baby's final run on Sunday in the Hybrid round went great and was a clean run. Overall, she placed I think 96th of 225 dogs, due to a fault in 2 of her 3 runs. Without those faults, she would have been in the top 25.

So, for me and Skye, it was not a good experience. He went 0/5, with all but 1 run being a zero point run. Weaves were the biggest issue - he would meander out about pole 4 looking at me, and wouldn't weave when I put him back in - this was in 4/5 runs. The one run he actually did weave correctly was the run where he knocked a bar, jumped a contact and got a refusal. We finished just barely above the people who did not show up :-\ . Pretty depressing. When we got home, I put him through the weaves out front and he did them super fast without a problem with a ball for reward. Who knows what was going on - I just know it's not an experience I will repeat with him.

I've been considering mostly retiring him from agility after his MACH and Perf. ADCH titles are earned, both of which we are close to earning. My initial thoughts about retiring him stem from his reactive behavior with other dogs. He really has to be managed and kept out of other dogs space - he will lunge at them, and sometimes bark his fool head off depending on the dog. It's something I really hate, and can make it stressful when we are in a cramped area getting ready for our turn. This is totally not an issue with Rip, which is how it should be. Skye also does not like to run when its warm - he will just shut down and go in slow motion. So.... add those issues to my Nationals experience, and I think just focusing on Rip going forward will be more rewarding for me, and probably less stressful for Skye. I will decide when the time comes.

Comments anyone?

I've talked to at least 4 people in person who have tried to post a comment to my blog and have been unable to do so. I just selected a new Blogger template - not sure what the issue is, but will start here.

I have also opened up comments to everyone, including Anonymous.

If you have a chance, please just try to put a simple comment to this post to see if it works. If it doesn't, I know you cant leave me a comment about that! But, if you are unable to comment, please just send me an email stating that you cant comment to my email address skyeboy1@gmail.com

Thanks!.

*** Edit

I have enabled 'pop up' comments per the suggestion of others on the blogger support forums that have been having the same kind of problems with comments.

Then if this doesnt do it, the next step is to use a 3rd party comment manager instead of Blogger comments - apparently this is a good solution but requires a bit of configuring.