Friday, July 11, 2008

Kaylie's Double Q #5 and Conor's First Agility Ribbons






It was an incredible day!! The day started off with the FAST class. The object of the FAST class is to collect as many points as you can (each obstacle has a flag with a point value), as well as doing a distance challenge. I'm so thankful I didn't enter Kaylie in the Excellent FAST class. There would have been NO way she could have done it. Here is a picture of the portion of the course with the distance challenge. There must have been 30 feet from the tape line to the tunnel. The challenge was to go from the green jump to the tunnel to the white winged jump. There were just a few dogs who succesfully completed that distance challenge. Anyway, we finally got to the Novice FAST class that Conor was entered in. He didn't do everything I expected him to, but it was enough to qualify and got FIRST PLACE!!! I was quite amazed. He had such a great time too, but we definitely need to work on the team work idea. :) Here is Conor with his first agility ribbons. Next was Kaylie's Excellent Jumpers run. Man it was a tricky course -- lots of traps, and it was set up so we almost HAD to do on-side weaves. Most people would prefer on-side weaves, but for some reason all of a sudden, we've been having problems with them. I walked the course probably 30 times, and every time I did it running towards the weaves so I could do off-side. It was all going to depend on how fast Kaylie was going if I was going to be able to pull it off. Well, she was flying, and there was no way I could get in position to do the off-side weaves, so I held my breath and tried not to move any part of my body to get those on-side weaves, and WHEW!! She did it. So we Q'd, and ended up getting 3rd place!!!! I was very amazed, because there were lots of very fast Border Collies out there. The 2nd place dog was exactly 1 second faster than Kaylie, and the 1st place dog was just like 10/100's of a second faster. So way cool!!! Then on to our Standard run. Oh man was it tough. There was a very tight boxy pinwheel section with weird angles in one portion, and then a very tough weave pole entrance. Again, that weave pole entrance favored those on-side weaves. I walked it both ways, but I just had a bad feeling with those on-side weaves. I just didn't trust that we could do 2 in a row, so I ran as fast as I possibly could to front cross in front of the weave poles to get off-side. It worked!! Whew!!! Next came the pinwheel portion, and again, I was holding my breath -- I thought for sure she was going to knock a bar -- she's never been a real tight jumper, and there were a couple of very severe tight wrap jumps in that pinwheel. But oh my -- she did it!!!! After that was just the dog walk and one more jump. I was still holding my breath, praying she didn't miss that dog walk contact. SHE MADE IT!!!!!! I thought for sure I was going to throw up after that -- I didn't breath for over 25 seconds!! And then it turns out we got 2nd PLACE!!!!! That meant we got 1.5 times our points, which turned out to be 27 points in our Standard run. WOOO HOOOOOO!!!!! We got 12 points from our Jumpers run, so we ended the day with 39 MACH points. I think we need around 500 more points, and 15 more double Q's. Oh boy!!! We can't wait to see what happens tomorrow!

1 comment:

Bam said...

Conor was a Dingo Dog On Crack:) :) :) DDOC for short.

Kaylie - The True Wonder Dog

At our last DOCNA (Dogs on Course in North America) agility trial in Prescott, Kaylie did fantastic! We are trying to be the first team to earn the MEX (Merit of Excellence) who started in the Beginner level. We are getting VERY close. All the other teams that have earned the MEX were grandfathered in at higher levels. Kaylie was just starting her agility career when DOCNA was created, so we had no choice but to start at the beginning. And as it is, I believe there are under 20 teams that have even earned the MEX to this point.

Well, going into the trial at Prescott, we needed 2 Specialist Gamblers legs and 2 Specialist Standard legs. In DOCNA, there are two types of Gamblers runs -- Traditional and Strategic Timed Gamblers. Unfortunately, we have only earned 3 Traditional Gamblers legs -- one from the Beginner class, one from the Intern class and one from the Specialist class. All the other Gamblers legs have come from the Strategic Time Gamblers. So, I knew going in that the chance of getting that Traditional Gamblers leg on Saturday was slim. We walked into the ring, and I knew Kaylie was on fire and ready to go. The Gamblers class is usually the first class of the trial, and Kaylie is usually absolutely wild in the first run. Well, this was no different. She was incredibly fast, and I was not -- I kept getting in her way, and things just fell apart. At 30 seconds, the buzzer rang, which meant I had to get to the gamble portion of the course. I sent her over the jump to the tunnel -- she took the wrong end of the tunnel, then came right back to me over the wrong jump and that was the end of that. No MEX for us this weekend. BUT, she did qualify in the two Standard runs she needed, getting First place both times, and she got her Strategic Timed Gamblers leg on Sunday, earning a Second place. Wooo hooo Kaylie!!! Out of 10 runs over the weekend, we qualified in 8 of them, placing 1st, 2nd or 3rd in all but one run -- our Jumpers run on Sunday. I got lost on the course and just got confused. Luckily, Kaylie can read the numbers on the cones (that's the only explanation I can come up with) because she ran the right course despite my mess ups! Hence the name "Wonder Dog." So we still Q'd, but got 6th place. Still, not too bad!!

So, our next DOCNA trial will be in Pinetop the end of August. Hopefully we'll get our MEX there! Just one Gambler leg to go.