Videos from Salt Lake City, Utah

Last weekend we were in Salt Lake City for AKC. The trial is held outdoors at a beautiful site. A horse farm with lot's of trees for shade and open fields to run and play with your dogs. Both dogs had a 50 percent qualifying rate. So no double Q's this weekend but nice runs with placements. Summit earned an Ex. B FAST leg, Standard leg, and another Jumpers. He now needs just one more jumpers for his MXJ and two more standard legs for his MX. Sage also had nice runs and some very close double Q's but for a missed contact, one refusal, and something else (I can't remember). She wasn't entered in FAST so just had two runs per day. I was able to get some videos of some of our runs.

Summit Ex. B Jumpers - first place

That was such a fun jumpers course. There were two common mistakes made by handlers on this course. 1. taking the tire jump for granted and many fast long strided dogs landed deep and ran around the tire. 2. not cueing the weaves soon enough. Some dogs missed the wp entry because of the momentum out of the tunnel and jump to the weaves.

Summit Saturday Ex. B Standard - 2nd place

There were 5 qualifying runs out of the entire 20" class! It is hard to see in the video but the sequence from chute to jump to panel is where most handlers had problems. Most tried to hang back and recall their dog out of the chute and then attempt to get them over the jump which caused either an ugly loopy turn, or dog sliced the jump and ended up on the a-frame, or dog missed the jump completely. I decided to go in and do a double front cross. My dogs are trained to not jump past my outside arm so both collected and had nice turns. Several other handlers tried this after seeing my run and their dogs still jumped extended and landed past the handler and took the a-frame or went past the panel jump.

Sage Ex. B Standard

This would have been a double Q for Sage (she qualified in jumpers) but for the dropped panel. Many handlers had trouble with the weavepole entrance (dogs took the chute instead) and the long straight line of jumps at the end. I thought this was a really fun course to run.

Summit Saturday Ex. B Jumpers

Another run where I end up on the ground (Do ya think I need cleats!). I recover nicely though and was even able to still get that front cross in after the tunnel. Unfortunately, Summit turns too tight on a jump and takes out the upright. This would have been a double Q for Mr. Summit if he hadn't taken out the jump. Luckily Summit was ok, but I was not. I ended up with 12 inches of swollen black and purple on the side of my thigh. I must have landed on something harder than grass.

Sage Saturday Ex. B Jumpers

I had already run Summit on this jumpers course so was very careful NOT to fall down again. I thought Sage had some beautiful tight turns in this run.

Summit Ex. B FAST - third place

FAST is AKC's version of Gamblers. The buzzer goes off just before the a-frame at the end but I wanted to practice his a-frame contact so I kept going. I knew he was fast enough to make up for the time lost. I think this is Summit's very first leg in Ex. B FAST. The class isn't offered very often and I only enter FAST when it's a one-ring trial as it creates too many conflicts in the three-ring trials.