Updates

Wow, it's been a looong time since I've written anything here. Sorry for my lack of presence :( We are still competing, and I thought I'd give a quick update on our current status:

In AKC, we are now up to 4 QQs and 280 MACH points. I'm not even worried about the points at this point as I'm absolutely sure we'll have 750 way before we reach 20 QQs. Philip often gets a single Q in a day, and he is so fast, that he earns points like no other. Double-Qs are a bit harder to come by for us. We just got the 4th one yesterday as a matter of fact :) Philip finished his MXJ title yesterday as well (i.e. 10 Qs in Excellent JWW)

Also in AKC, Philip got his Excellent FAST title over the summer, finishing the last leg we needed in Excellent A. I was worried we wouldn't get it in time before the local clubs stopped offering FAST much, but he managed to finish it on the second to last try :) Since I was signed up for one more, I gave it another shot in an Excellent B run, but Philip didn't Q in that one,and we haven't done FAST since (not that it's been offered much anyway). I think that we are done with FAST for good though. The next title Philip could get in it would need 10 more Qs, and with how rare it has become, it would take forever to get them. Plus, it always requires lots of sitting around, waiting for the run, since FAST is usually at the end of the day.

On the other hand, we've started running in T2B instead! I'm really enjoying it, as the runs are always very quick, and our local clubs usually make them the first run in the morning, so no lingering around needed to wait for the run. Philip seems to have an "all or nothing" attitude for T2B right now. He either pays attention to me, runs fast and clean, earning 1st place and 10 points, or he fails miserably and gets an NQ because he's being a brat. So far, we've had 6 tries at it, and qualified 2 times, both with 1st place, so we have 20 points.
Other than being fun, a great advantage of the T2B for us is that it lets Philip get his "crazy" out if he has some in the morning. I'd much rather him bombing a T2B run and being collected in the regular runs than the other way around. Of course, quite often he bombs all 3 runs of the day anyway - brat!

In USDAA, we only had one trial since my last update here, which was back in June. Since Philip only needs Standard and Snooker Qs to finish his Advanced title, that is all I signed him up for. He bombed the Standard run on Saturday, and then wasn't feeling too well on Sunday (too much fun the day before = sore and slow Philip), so he had no Qs that weekend at all. So we are still in the same place in USDAA.

So there you have it, a quick update on our progress. We have 2 more AKC trials in December, and then that'll be it for this year. We'll see how it goes!