USDAA Weekend coming up!

Finally after a month and a half since our last trial on Thanksgiving weekend we are competing again. We have what should be a relaxing 1 ring USDAA trial in Longmont. Skye and Rip are entered in everything, and this will be Rip's first Masters Pairs run. We still need 1 more Q in Snooker to move up to Masters there, though we dont have any Q's yet in Advanced Std or Jumpers.
This trial is starting on Friday afternoon with Gamblers and Grand Prix.

Katrina is running Baby, Rush and Ice too, though I think she has just one run per day per dog. Baby is just one jumpers Q away from getting her (new name, PDCH), which would give her the champion title in both Performance and Championship divisions.

USDAA has decided to rename some of the titles for the Performance division to more closely match the Championship division names, so what was the APD is now the PDCH.
The P1 is PD (Performance Dog)
The PII is APD (Advanced Performance Dog)
The PIII is MPD (Masters Performance Dog)

We had class this week, though took a 2 week break from training during the holidays. Rip ran well in class but Skye was a bit crazy - glad Gamblers is first!

For Skye, I am going to try and earn his PDCH-Bronze, which means I need to start entering Pairs again. I stopped entering it after 5 Q's since he doesn't like any dogs, and I don't like the stress of worrying if he's going to go after a dog. Hopefully going forward Katrina can enter Baby in pairs and we can get 10 Q's that way ;)
Skye has 15 Snooker Qs, 11 Jumpers, 9 Standards, 8 Gamblers and just the 5 Pairs. We already have our Tournament requirements, so I can see this ultimately coming down to a Pairs run!

Should be a good time!

Should I stay or should I go now?

Skye and I qualified for the 2011 AKC National Agility Championships that are going to be held in Lexington, Virginia in April. I've been debating with myself if I want to make the commitment to drive all that way. It's 1500 miles away.

The Pros:
Skye has been running great lately - fast and motivated, and we have been very consistent. He got his MACH this year.
He's in him prime, age-wise.
Qualifying is not easy, so who knows if we will qualify for the following year's Nationals.
You never know what next year could bring - dogs get injured, etc. Hate to have regrets that I 'should have gone'.

The Cons:
It's really far away - almost 3 days drive each way, plus 3 days for the event. It will end up being very expensive for 5 runs. (Skye is NOT flying!)
We did not have a good Nationals experience this year - Skye was stressed and then I was stressed. Many popped weave poles.
Katrina did not qualify with Baby, so not sure she would even want to go.
Skye is not fast enough to be really competitive - so best we could hope for is probably a top 30 finish if we ran clean.
Likely not a lot of Colorado people going since it is so far.
Have to drive across Kansas ! LOL


SO, lots to think about. The event opened for entry Dec. 1st, and will close on Jan 19th.
http://www.akc.org/events/agility/national_agility_championship/

Perception is not reality

This was interesting - Skye's Excellent JWW and Rip's Open JWW courses from Sunday (see post below) had the same first 10 or so obstacles.
This is a great example of how perception is not always reality.
I felt like Skye was really flying through this opening, and that Rip was going slow. I decided to put them side by side to see, and I was amazed to see that they were basically running neck and neck until the weaves. Skye has better weaves so he got a stride on Rip there.
I know that Rip does have a lot more speed that he only uses occasionally, and I expect as he gets more confident, he will get much faster. Skye was giving me probably the speed that he can - I dont expect that he would run this faster.