Monday, February 1, 2010

Another QQ for Summit and planning for the FRAT Seminar



We were down at the Black Forest this past weekend for a two-day AKC trial. The results are....


.... Sage STILL needs one more double Q for her MACH. She was 50 percent for the weekend. Nice runs but was called for the dogwalk contact in both Standard runs.


Summit won Standard on Saturday with a smokin' time of 36 seconds! He got second in Jumpers for a double Q. Now we are down to just 4 QQ's to finish qualifying for Nationals.


Sunday, I pulled Summit off a tunnel (yes, I can pull off a BC from a tunnel) by dropping my arm and moving laterally too soon. Darn! I have done that before and even walked the course with that little song in the back of my head (do not drop arm and move laterally before dog has committed to tunnel). When he got to the teeter, it was not slide to the end and wait for release but slide to the end and BANG and GO. Sigh... he's been pushing his teeters lately in competition. So he got his NRM and I thanked the judge and we left the ring.


That afternoon I asked David to help me get the teeter out of the snow bank but the bottom 1/8 of the board is frozen in a solid block of ice.


Sunday afternoon I just played with jumpers since neither one of my dogs Q'd in the morning. I decided to try different challenges with each dog.


Sage: lateral leadout, move laterally away from the poles about 5 feet while she's weaving. She Qualified with 3rd place.


Summit: lateral leadout (I dropped my arm too soon and pulled him off the second jump), extreme distance from the weaves (WooHoo! I started moving laterally when he was half way in the poles and was able to get 30 feet away by the time he exited). Pushing for speed (I know... I just wanted to see how he handled the pressure - he dropped one bar and had one wrong course).


I could have run the course with Summit to qualify. It was a nice course, we could have run clean but I really wanted to proof our training. I learned a lot on that run.


I've been very busy finalizing last details of my agility club's annual 4-day Seminar. It starts this Friday and we are having Mary Ellen Barry and Jennifer Crank out to teach.


I am participating in all 4 days of course!


I'm signed up for the full day Masters handling with Mary Ellen on Friday. The full day APHS Foundation/Basic Skills session with Mary Ellen on Saturday. The half day APHS handling (masters level) with Jennifer Crank and half day European style coursework that afternoon. Monday I have another handling session with Jennifer Crank and then a half day weaves session with Mary Ellen.


I am going to have some tired dogs by the end of the four days. I'm looking forward to learning a lot from two great instructors who use the same handling system that I do.

6 comments:

Chris and Ricky said...

I think you are going to LOVE Jenn! We are taking her handling class right now and she just knows her APHS stuff cold! She's really good at explaining things and showing things and she's well organized, etc.. and nice too! Hope you have a great time! (and now I know why she's not going to be here for our class next Monday :)

Diana said...

Love the picture of Summit, its awesome. Sorry about the MACH but it still sounds like you had a great weekend. Diana

Kathy Mocharnuk said...

Love the picture. Wow, the seminar sounds like it will be AWESOME! OMG, I can not imagine your poor teeter all frozen in ice, LOL, that makes it harder to train!
YIPPIE for Summit's standard run and the jumpers.

kiwichick said...

My teeter is frozen solid too. After this weekend I wish I had a dogwalk :-) Sounds like you had some great training moments. Sage's Mach is around the corner. Have fun at the seminar. I try to follow some of the APHS too.

Kathy said...

Get done with the seminar and send Jenn back to the midwest! ;)

Christine said...

Congratulations on the QQ and that fab photo. Look forward to reading about the seminar - sounds terrific