Sage Double Q's again and Summit earns his Ex. FAST title

This weekend was the CKC AKC trial at the Denver Coliseum. Three rings, three judges, and three classes equaled tons of FUN.

Both Sage and Summit were running nicely. Sage double-Q'd on Sunday and also earned a leg in Ex. B FAST. The Send was jump to a-frame and then into the tunnel under the AF. I was pretty confident Summit would get the Send since he has independent contacts and a verbal command for the tunnel but was not so confident about Sage. But she nailed it. She had a nice running A-frame and then responded well to my pressure and redirected into the tunnel and then over the last jump.

Summit had one OTT run in Saturday's standard class but then came back to win the Ex. A Jumpers class that afternoon. He also earned the last leg he needed for his XF title with a second place.

Summit's JWW course times are consistently 2 full seconds faster than Sage when both run clean. What is interesting is I am for the most part, starting to handle the course exactly the same for both dogs. Which I guess means that I take advantage of forward and lateral Sends in order to get downstream to execute those front crosses.

Another thing I'm realizing is that the calmer and less "rushed" I am when handling Summit, the smoother he runs and the bars stay up. Saturday was a good example. We had FAST first thing Saturday morning. Summit had no collection or focus and was all about go, go, go. After he came blasting out of the tunnel, completing ignoring my lateral movement towards the next obstacle, I recalled him to my side to try again and he nipped me on the leg (thigh). He hasn't done that in a very very long time - boy was he high! I gave him a moment to calm down and then I finished the gamble and then sent him through the weavepoles on our way to the finish jump. I had less than 10 minutes until I had to run him in standard. I lead out with a simple LOP, he had a good startline stay but then blasted over the jump, ignoring my collection cue and landed at least one stride behind me. The rest of the run was pretty much the same, no collection, missed his weavepole entry twice and stopped at the bottom of the dogwalk with 4 feet on the ground (but he did wait). I found myself rushing with him to get around the course, my handling was not smooth.... I was totally hooking-in to his OTT behavior.

That afternoon in Jumpers I ran Sage first (before Summit). The run was beautiful and so smooth. The Ex. A dogs ran next. I wondered if my baby dog would have a brain this afternoon. I decided that no matter how crazy he acted, I would run him exactly as if I was running Sage. I put his morning behavior out of my mind and focused on handling him smoothly and keeping my body quiet.

Well he had a beautiful run, didn't drop a single bar and executed a serpentine perfectly. He won the class with a time of 23.04 seconds. His time would have put him in 2nd place in "B" but only 100's of a second from 1st place.

Videos will be posted as soon as I get them from Don.