May AKC Trial

Philip and I went to another trial this weekend. I wasn't originally planning on going to this as it was a little father than I'm used to, but I signed up for it because it offered FAST both days, hoping we'd get at least one of them and finish the elusive Excellent FAST title.

This trial ran FAST first thing in the morning, which was nice for a change, and Philip was full of it and ready to go. On Saturday, the Send bonus was very difficult, having to do the A-Frame, then take the back side of the tunnel, and go back over the A-Frame again! I don't know how in the world the judge expected dogs to get this one, but I'm pretty sure only 1 or 2 dogs qualified this course among all jump heights. Obviously, Philip wasn't one of them. He actually did the A-Frame nicely both directions, and even took the tunnel, but unfortunately he took the closer (incorrect) end of it. Otherwise, he ran a bit crazily, and even broke his lead out stay at the beginning, but I figured I should let him since it gets his energy out for him.

Next up was Standard. The course was a bit tricky, and I thought to myself that Philip might mess up one particular spot (the tunnel before the A-Frame), so I decided ahead of time that if he would mess that up, I would demand for him to stick his 2-on-2-off on the A-Frame or otherwise take him off course. Philip had an idea of his own though - he took off running like the wind and took a wrong jump right at the start, then ran past the chute and around it, and when we reached the tunnel I though he wouldn't get, he actually got it right. However I was set on my plan and the run was already ruined anyway, so I had him go up the A-Frame and asked him to pause at the end. Of course, he didn't even flinch an ear, and ran off. I was mad at his antics at this point, so I yelled at him to lay down, told the judge thank you, caught Philip and carried him out of the ring. I told him he was bad and didn't give him any treats (normally, I give him some no matter if he runs well or not, but not this time!). He looked confused, but eventually accepted his no-treat fate. Hopefully it taught him a lesson!

Last of the day was Jumpers. This course actually has a very nice flow and everyone ran it very fast. Sometimes it's boring to have easier courses like that, but this day it was a relief to me consider how Philip has behaved up until then. I don't know if the course was just really that much easier than usual, or if the lack of treats earlier has left a mark in Philip's brain, but he paid very close attention to me, and ran perfectly. He was a bit tired and not too fast, but we finished clean in 6th place, earned a Q and 7 MACH points. Yay, day not totally ruined :)

On Sunday, we woke up early again to head to the trial. About a third way from home I saw light rain drops on my windshield. No big deal I thought, but as I kept driving, the rain got harder and harder. When we got to the site, it was raining fairly hard, and it was windy and cold. On top of that, while I really hoped that Sunday's FAST would be easier, I came to find out that it again required a back-end of the tunnel :( Philip just doesn't know how to do these send, and I knew right away he wouldn't get it. I really contemplated not running considering the crappy weather, but figured we should give it a shot, plus it would be a chance for Philip to get his craziness out. So I walked the course and made up a vague plan to get minimum points necessary. Philip ran fast and seemed to have tried hard to pay attention to me. Still, as expected he took the wrong side of the send tunnel. I even did another approach to try it again, but again he took the closer side. I let him do the rest of the send, and then over the finish line. This weekend FAST just wasn't meant to be for us I guess.

The rain kept going, and the disappointing morning run made me think I should just head home rather than continue getting all wet and cold. I was already there though, and it was already paid for, so I tuckered into my car, and waited for out next run to be ready. Both Jumpers and Standard courses were moderate difficulty on map, so I figured we'd give it our best shot, and if all else fails, maybe get another lesson or two into Philip's head about listening to me on course.

Standard was up first, and right away Philip almost messed everything up. The run started with a C-shaped tunnel, so I placed him in front of the entranced and stepped to the side before telling him to go. He darted off towards me instead of the tunnel, and i scrambled screaming "NO!" and pointing to the tunnel again. I don't know how I stopped him from going into the wrong side, but he turned and went the correct way - whew! Judging by that start, I expected Philip to go crazy again, but he was actually very attentive to me and ran the rest of the course well! He didn't stick his contacts, but I did exaggerate slowing him down, so he still didn't miss them. As we finished the run, I was worried that a refusal might have been called at the beginning, but when the results were out, we had a Q!!! Guess since he didn't actually trip the timer, he didn't technically start running yet, so that's why no refusal :) In fact, he ran so well that he took 3rd place with 18 MACH points :D

Finally, we got ready for Jumpers. I walked it again to ensure I knew the course, and tried to keep Philip's attention on me. We walked out to the course, and he seemed a little tired, so he wasn't overly fast. This is good since I can keep better control of him when he isn't running like lightning. He came close to taking a wrong end of the tunnel before the weaves, but saved it in the last moment. He then sprinted ahead of me at one point, but I managed to slow him down when staying on track. A couple more jumps and we were done. I couldn't believe it, a clean run, a second one of the day! Philip got his first ever Double-Q!!! I waited for the results just to be sure, and he did it, he really did. He earned another 9 MACH points in this run, and we had our very first QQ!

What a way to finish the weekend. Our grand total is 2 jumper Qs, 1 standard Q, a total of 34 MACH points, and a Double-Q. I don't even care that Philip didn't get the FAST leg any more. The QQ was totally worth it. I'm so proud of my little man! We'll get that FAST another time (gonna be a while before another trial pops up with it), but thats okay, we are officially on our way to MACH. Good job Philip!

April AKC Trial 3

I did a one-day trial today with Philip because it was offering FAST, and we just needed one more Excellent A leg in that.

However, the stars (or rather Philip's brain) were not on my side...

To start off, we had a Standard run, in which Philip went absolutely insane. He ran happily in circles, taking several wrong turns, zooming off the contacts, jumping off the table early, messing up the weaves entry, and generally being an idiot. At least he was a happy idiot, and had a blast paying zero attention to me. Goodness, I haven't seen him this crazy in several months now, I really really need this behavior not to continue, I don't know what's gotten into him!

Next up was Jumpers, and thankfully Philip had gotten all his craziness out of him by the time it started, so he paid attention and ran well on this course. Unfortunately, he somehow managed to knock two bars though :( Another thing we haven't really seen in a while. Why are all these immaturities making a comeback all of a sudden?

Last but not least was the whole reason for going to this trial - the FAST run. The send bonus today consisted of a jump, going straight to the A-frame, and straight into a tunnel (C-shaped with either side being okay to enter!). Sounds easy enough, but there was also a jump right on the handler line where the dogs were supposed to go to the tunnel. Of course, when a dog sees the handler over to the right, and a jump nearby, the dog will think that the jump is the correct obstacle, so this made the send bonus tricky. So much so that I even considered not waiting for the run when I saw the map, but I stuck it out in the end. Everything went as expected - Philip went over the jump and onto the A-frame with ease, and then turned towards the wrong jump instead of the tunnel. I stood to the side pointing to the tunnel, and he stopped and eventually turned back into the tunnel without taking the jump. However, the judge had already called a refusal and faulted our bonus :( It was good progress, but still an NQ.

So, as you can probably tell, it was a useless and frustrating day for us. I'm kinda glad I'm not signed up for Sunday, as it would have probably ended in a similar manner. Oh well, till next time...

April AKC Trial 2

Alright, here's a quick recap of the trial this last weekend.

On Saturday we started off with Standard, which was a very difficult course. Philip did great to start with and got through all the hard parts, but unfortunately took the wrong side of the tunnel towards the end :( Figures that he'd mess up something easy like that. I'm not complaining though - only three 8-inch dogs qualified this run!

Jumpers was a nice course, and Philip ran fairly well, but again took the wrong side of one of the tunnels. Somebody told me that I leaned incorrectly and that's what probably caused him to change direction. That might very well be so, unfortunately I didn't have a video to review this run.

We had FAST on Saturday, and the send was interesting, but was the same as a part of the earlier Jumpers course (including the tunnel Philip messed up). It played to our advantage that the dogs had practiced that little part earlier, and Philip was a star. He got through the send bonus without any hesitation at all, and we got a total of 68 points to get us a Q. The timer malfunctioned a bit, but since Philip was the only dog in his class height, the judge asked if we'd be okay with SCT as our time. I accepted - better than risking failing a re-run :) Just one more ExA FAST leg to go!

On the Sunday Standard run Philip's bratty not-paying-attention attitude made a slight appearance. He back-jumped a jump instead of wrapping around it as he should have right from the start. Later, he also blew right off the A-Frame ignoring my pleas to "pause", and went straight for an off-course Teeter. Weird dog, I hope I don't see that again anytime soon! Grrr...

Jumpers run was really tricky (same judge as Saturday's crazy Standard), but I carefully watched earlier dogs for spots that needed work. There were 3 spots that many dogs messed up - first was an off-course jump before which many handlers failed to get their dog's attention; second was a double jump out of the tunnel, and several handlers rushed forward without working it much, so the dogs blew past it; last was right at the end of the run, where the dogs had to tightly wrap around a jump before the finish line. I thought I had everything down, but right as we reached the first off-course jump, even though I called Philip's name, he paid me no attention and went for it anyway :( We did well on the double, and even the wrap at the end, but that first mistake caused up to NQ.

So we ended the weekend with just a single FAST Q, though that was a good one to have. Let's hope this weekend was a one-time set-back, and Philip doesn't go back to his aloof self again...

April AKC Trial 1

Actually, this was more like half-a-trial because I only went on Saturday. It was a bit far of a drive, so I didn't wanna do it twice, but they were offering FAST on Saturday, which is why I braved the drive - to get an extra chance at a FAST leg before July, especially since he has failed at two of them already.

Turns out, this was an awesome decision on my part - Philip had a great day. We had the Standard course first, which was pretty tough, but my little guy did very well. He did many hard parts correctly, but he messed up once, taking a tunnel too early. Still, it was a very nice run for him, even though he NQed.

Jumpers was next, and everyone was saying that it's really tricky too. I walked it a few times and saw that it certainly had some lucrative off-course jumps, especially at the beginning - there was 3 jumps in a straight line, but the dogs needed to only take two of them, and then take a sharp turn to the right. I saw many dogs take that 3rd jump, and I knew that it would be tempting for Philip too. So I decided to take a different approach - I placed Philip on the start line and walked out past the two jumps, standing in front of the 3rd (wrong) one. It was a bit risky being such a long lead-out, but Philip waited for me nicely. As he approached me over the two jumps, I turned and he followed! Back in the days, he might have blown right past me, but this time he listened, so I was very happy with that! He followed my lead very well for the rest of the course too, and had a nice clean run in the end. Another Q in Jumpers for him! As a matter of fact, he even took second place! Only 4 dogs qualified this run in our jump height (out of 15 or so), and the third dog was only 0.05 seconds behind Philip - crazy :)

Oh, on a slight tangent, let's talk MACH points. Now that Philip is in Excellent B, he is earning his points on qualified runs. The way these work is that each course has a standard time, which is based on how many yards the dogs has to run, and also fluctuates for different jump heights a bit. The MACH points earned are equal to the number of seconds that the dog came in under the standard course time.
So, for example, let's say the course time is set to 76 seconds, and the dog finishes in 61.3 seconds. The finish time is rounded up (to 62) and subtracted from the course time, so we get 76 - 62 = 14. This dog would earn 14 MACH points. Though there is another caveat - if the dog finishes 1st, its points get doubled (giving this dog 28 points), and 2nd place gets a 1.5x factor (giving this dog 21 points). Third place and further just gets the seconds as calculated above.
So, back to our Jumpers run - Philip finished 16 seconds ahead of the standard course time, but since he came in second, he got a total of 24 MACH points!

Last up was the FAST run - most important one of the day for us :) The course was similar to the Standard one that we ran earlier, and the send consisted of a jump into a tunnel, and back over the same jump. It was somewhat similar to the sends we had a couple weekends ago, but not quite as tricky since the tunnel was perpendicular to the jump, and required entering into the closest (more obvious) end. The beginning was a bit tough to plan to get all the necessary points, and I walked it several different ways. Philip still has fairly weak weaves, so I usually try to avoid them in FAST, as they just slow him down and often fail, but the way this course was laid out, the best approach to the send was from the weaves. I watched how other people were walking it, and most were taking that route. So eventually I settled on a plan that would include the weaves, thinking that if Philip messed up, I'd just let him bail out and run alongside of them instead. There was another 10-point obstacle I could take after the send, as a safety measure for points if weaves messed up.
Philip was the first one to run, so I didn't get to watch other dogs, but I settled on that plan. He did the beginning well, and we plunged into the weaves. Lo and behold, he did them very nicely again (he's done them well all day!). I was on the wrong side of him, but we switched and I took him to the send. He took the jump, and hesitated a bit before the tunnel since it was a bit far, but with a little extra persuasion from me, he went for it. He then almost missed the jump on the way back, but miraculously fixed himself. We should have had enough points at this point, but I felt like we had plenty of time still, so I had Philip take the 10-point serpentine of jumps anyway, and then he was over the finish line. So in the end we had a whole 76 points (too bad they aren't MACH points, heh), and of course a Q - out first one in Excellent A FAST.

So there you have it, we had 2 Qs and came very close to it on the other course. Philip was really good all day, got a good amount of points, and only has 2 more ExcA FAST legs to go :) Good boy! As a reward, he got a delicious hoof to eat today, he's been at it for about an hour, and has barely made a dent in it - hehe :P

March AKC Trial 3

We had a yet another trial this past weekend. I think this is the first time that we've gone to 3 trials in a single month - Philip is on a roll :)

Saturday wasn't his day... On Jumpers, he took a wrong course, also causing a bar to fall down as I was trying to get his attention. On Standard, he was all over the place - missing a Dog Walk contact (bad dog!), jumping off of the Table too soon, and skipping the last pole on the Weaves. So two NQs for us on Saturday.

Sunday was a bit misty and cold in the morning, so I wasn't sure how we'd do, but the courses were very nice, which was gratifying for a change. When Philip started off on Jumpers, he nicked the very first bar, which I heard, but couldn't see if it fell or not. As the course went on, there was a point where we were running kind of back towards the beginning. So I decided there would be no harm in sneaking a peek to see if the first bar stayed up. So I looked and saw that it was fine, but meanwhile Philip took a wrong turn because I wasn't watching him! Ugh, I'm so mad at myself. My instructor always says how you should never look back at a bar - there isn't anything you can do about it anyway, so keep focused, you'll find out later if it stayed up. Of course, it's very difficult not to look, and it bit me in the butt this time. Philip ran the rest of the course beautifully, and would have qualified had I not made that mistake.

I was bummed out and not looking forward to Standard, thinking Philip will probably mess up the table or take the wrong turn as usual. However, when the time came to run, Philip was paying attention and I got back in the proper mindset. He did the Table okay, and I really stressed the Dog Walk with him, telling him to wait a good 5 times, so he slowed down and got the contact. Lastly, he did the Weaves well, and finished the course clean! So we got a Q for this run :) Philip took 7th place again (he really likes being 7th I think), and got a whole 18 MACH points - good boy!

Too bad I was an idiot on Jumpers, otherwise we would have gotten our first double Q - oh well, maybe that bad run is what caused us to run better in Standard. Good weekend anyway :)

March AKC Trial 2

We went to another trial this weekend (told you there are lots coming up!). We had a good weekend, and I'll try to make this short :)

Saturday Jumpers had a really tough weave entry, and unfortunately Philip missed it, getting to the second pole instead of the first. Otherwise his run was really nice, Philip paid attention, and made no other mistakes.

Saturday Standard had a few tricky turns, so it took a lot of screaming on my part to get Philip to go the right way. However, the screaming actually worked this time! One time he got super close to the off-course Teeter, but I managed to get him off just as he almost stepped on it :) He also got his weaves spot-on even though I wasn't next to him - good boy! He got a Q and took 1st place out of the Excellent A dogs in this course, and this was our 3rd and last Excellent A Standard Q!!! Woohoo, after 10 painful months (he finished Open Standard last May!), we are finally moving on to Excellent B Standard!

No FAST this weekend, so I waited for little dogs to finish, put in the move-up request, and headed home. Sunday morning started way too early due to the time change. As a matter of fact, Philip was still asleep when I got up - not a usual sight at all, he usually waits eagerly for me! Also, being so early, the grass was all wet from the morning dew at the site, soaking my shoes completely - that wasn't so pleasant, yuck...

Sunday Jumpers had another tricky weave entry, and again Philip messed up and took the second pole :( Looking back, it was totally my fault for not correcting his approach, but since he was one of the first dogs on the line, I didn't get to realize this till after our run. The rest of the run was really nice, I even had several people comment to me how well Philip ran :) He paid perfect attention, I didn't have to scream at him at all, and I got all my front crosses in as I wanted!

Sunday Standard wasn't bad at all, and I even had high hopes for it, but unfortunately Philip knocked one bar down :( I'm really not sure what happened there, as he doesn't knock bars much at all anymore, but the rest of the course was clean, so it gives me good hope that Philip might finally be getting better at paying attention to me. I'm starting to believe that getting out of the "terrible twos" really did wonders for him now that he is 3 years old!

So all in all, just one Q for us this weekend, but a very desired Q, and only 1 mistake each in the other runs, so I'm very happy with the results. Now that Philip is finally in Excellent B for both courses, we can start shooting for doubles, and we'll have more opportunities for points - yay!

March AKC Trial 1 - Saturday

Hello again! March is a busy month in the Agility world for us. We have 3 trials this month, and just got back from the first one this weekend!

This was a really big 4 day long event, but Philip and I only went on Saturday and Sunday since I have to work and all :) The event also had Obedience, Rally-O and other fun stuff going on, but more on that in a bit.

Saturday's Standard run was a usual disaster, though it was an extremely tough course. Our fiasco started off with a missed contact on the Dog Walk! That was definitely a first for Philip, and I actually didn't know it even happened until after the run. I really need to enforce the contacts with Philip more. He tends to run off without stopping in trials, even though he does his two-on-two-off in class. Besides that, he also took a wrong jump (I totally expected that one, it was a really tough turn), and made another mistake that escapes me right now.

Before having our JWW run, I went to check out the Obedience rings, and saw the CGC testing area (that was going on the whole weekend as well). I've been wanting to get Philip his CGC for a while now, but I always felt like he'd fail the dog greeting and stranger greeting parts of the test, since he is a jumpy boy. I told the CGC lady that I wanted to watch a test before trying it, but she encouraged me that Philip is behaving really well and I should just try it. I wasn't convinced yet, so I told her I had an Agility run to do, but that I might come back later.

The JWW run was a much better turn out. Philip was getting nicely tired by the time it came up, so he paid attention to me, and he did the course very nicely. There were a couple of spots where I had to scream for him, but he actually listened and came back to me. He got a Q taking 7th place, and earned 4 more MACH points :)

Being such a big event, there were a lot of dogs there, so we had to wait quiet a while for our FAST run. So while waiting, I went back to the CGC area. I thought I would sign up for a spot with Philip, but apparently the tester lady figured we came to test, and started it before I even realized it! She petted him, looked at his ears and teeth, lifted his paws, brushed him, and Philip just sat there like a sweet little angel boy! I was so amazed at it. She then asked us to do some commands - sit, down, stay, come, as well as walking nicely on leash, and working with distractions (two girls did some hula hoop spinning near us). We walked by a dog, and shook hands with the tester. Last but not least, I left Philip with the tester on leash, and went behind a trailer to fill out paperwork. This is usually the hardest part of the test since dogs don't like having their owner out of sight, but Philip has a great stay and has been out of my sight many times, so I knew he'd have zero issues with that one. And so we passed our CGC test! I never imagined it would be so simple, I'm so proud of my boy :)

Anyway, back to Agility, the FAST run. As you might remember from our last trial, Philip had finished his Open FAST title, so this weekend we got to try Excellent FAST. In Excellent there are 5 more points to earn (for a total of 60), and 5 more feet on distance (for a total of 15). Saturday's send bonus included a tunnel, out to a jump, then having to do a 180 from the jump back into the same tunnel. The points weren't so bad to get in this course, but I decided to go for the send first. With Philip's love for tunnels, you'd think this send would have been easy-peasy, but the U-turn proved to be a little too much. Philip took the tunnel, and the jump, and came back around it, but the turn made him lose his momentum, so I couldn't get him to go back into the tunnel. He was just so confused, and then found something to sniff in the grass, so we got a fault for our send. Of course, no send = NQ in FAST.

Before walking off course though, I figured I'd do a little contact practice. In our class just a few days earlier, the instructor was talking about how if you mess up your run early in the course, you might as well practice things you have trouble with, and pointed out the contacts is one of those things for Philip. So I took him to the A-Frame, and he blew off it as he usually does in trials. No contact meant no running for him, so I turned around to the exit. In hindsight, I should have picked him up and carried him out (as our instructor told me, but alas - I forgot). By running him out, he still got to take a couple of jumps and have some fun on the way, so it might not have stuck so well that he did something wrong. Oh well, next time I'll hopefully remember.

That wraps up our Saturday shenanigans, and this post is getting long, so I'm going to split it up, read up on Sunday shortly in the new post! :)

February AKC Trial 2

This past weekend marked exactly a year since Philip and I started running in AKC Agility competitions. We went to the same trial that it all began with last year, one which is famous to be on a rainy weekend with lots of mud. Even though the forecasts were promising earlier in the week, this year still wasn't an exception, and it started pouring Friday night... Even though last year a few select people (including yours truly) braved the course anyway, this year the trial secretary decided to cancel the runs on Saturday. I ended up driving to the site anyway since the email didn't go out until after I had left home, and it definitely looked slushy there, so maybe it was for the best. Still though, it sucks since we all paid for it and didn't even get to try - don't think we'll be getting any refunds.

The weather cleared up by Sunday though, so we were on for our 3 runs. First up was Standard, and Philip did a pretty good job, except being sucked onto the Teeter at the very beginning, earning himself a wrong course. He also stopped before getting up on the table, though I heard that another dog had peed on it earlier, so that might have been why.

The jumpers course was set up with a very tricky beginning - there were 3 jumps straight out, but the dogs had to only take 2 of them, and then take a sharp U-turn into a tunnel. I managed to turn Philip away from the 3rd jump, but he didn't turn far enough and went for a different jump out to the right instead of the tunnel. He also ended up knocking the 2nd jump bar, and then another later.

So we got two NQs in those runs and had quite a while to wait before our FAST run, which was the last thing of the day. This trial was taking place as part of a bigger dog show, so I went to see the pretty doggies during the break. Philip got quite a bit attention there since he was all muddy (I let him romp in some slush after the runs) - everyone commented on how much fun he must have had that morning :) Unfortunately, I forgot to grab my camera, so no pictures of pretty dogs for you guys, but I saw one super weird dog. It was called a Bergamasco, and you guys should totally look it up, such a strange looking dog!

Anyway, back to Agility. We finally got to run FAST around 3pm (ugh!), and I thought it'd be easy as always, however Philip had gone completely out the window! We began with a tire into the weave poles, which he messed up, and I didn't bother fixing. So we ran ahead to the Send Bonus which included a jump, an A-Frame, and a tunnel. Well usually we have no problem with these things, but Philip just would not go to the jump! I was flabbergasted. Finally he went over it after me taking him in circles for the 3rd time, and he easily did the other two obstacles of the Send. After that I wanted him to turn left, but he totally ignored me and ran straight ahead. It's no big deal in FAST since we can do whatever we want, but he was frustrating me beyond belief, since we needed our points, and were running out of time. I finally called him to the Teeter, which was worth 9 points, and then he ran by a jump that was right there for 10 points, having me turn him around yet again, but he did get over it and to the finish line on time.

In the end, we got barely got our Q, with just 1 point over the requirement, and 0.11 seconds under the course time! This was our last needed Open FAST Q though, so Philip got his title and will be moving up to Excellent A FAST next weekend!

February AKC Trial 1

We went to our first AKC trial of the year this past weekend. I can't believe I didn't make it to any AKC trials until now. No worries though, we have quite a few coming up in the next months :)

AKC has recently come up with a new Agility class called Time 2 Beat (T2B for short). I'll touch on it more in a separate post later, but it will be officially starting on July 1st. Our local trial secretary is very excited to start putting it on, but consequently that means that they'll mostly stop offering FAST once they get T2B going. To let us FAST-fanatics get our fill of it before it's gone though, they are offering it a lot more up until July, so Philip and I are going to try and get our Excellent FAST title before it disappears. Anyway, you are going to see a lot more FAST on this blog in the next few months!

So, on to our trial... Saturday started off with Excellent A Standard, which was a fairly tricky course, and Philip had the case of crazies on it, forgetting who I was or what I wanted :) It's really frustrating when he does this (which seems to be pretty often recently), but at the same time it's pretty hilarious to watch him go insane too.

The Excellent B JWW run was much better though. I had my well-behaved Philip back, and the course had a great flow, so he listened well and completed the course with a Q. This was our first Q in Excellent B and we earned our first MACH points! Philip was in 7th place and earned 12 MACH points in the run - not bad at all!

We had to wait a very long time for our Open FAST run, and the weather was warming up, plus I wasn't feeling so well, but we stuck it out, determined to get our Qs before July :) Philip is generally very good at FAST so far (he's only NQed once in it, and that was because the course was full of mud due to rain, and he couldn't run), so I never stress those runs. The Send Bonus was pretty interesting being set up kind of in a middle of the course with a jump into a tunnel, but it was no problem for Philip. He ran great, we got a total of 71 points and took 2nd place. The first place went to an awesome little Papillon, that dog ran like the wind! This was our second Q in Open FAST, so just one more to go before moving up to Excellent.

Sunday wasn't nearly as good of a day for us, as Philip was back to his crazy self again. On the Standard course, he indulged in his tunnel love, taking each in the wrong direction, and then getting a double dose when I fixed him to go the correct way. He also messed up the weaves and totally skipped the two-on-two-off on the contacts - sigh!

The Jumpers course seems to always go better for us recently, but unfortunately Philip knocked down the very first jump bar, which was disappointing. He also took a wrong course at the very end, but that was probably because I didn't really care at that point and wasn't paying as much attention as I should have.

Oh well, the two Qs on Saturday were still a fairly good outcome for the weekend. Our next trial is in two weeks and we'll have FAST both days, so we should have some Qs there too :)

November AKC Trial

Philip and I went to another trial this weekend. Nothing overly exciting happened, so I'll make this quick.

Saturday Standard was a disaster. I forgot to bring a toy to get Philip focused on me before the run, and with it being early morning, he had way too much energy on his paws. So when he got to the course and off-leash, he went a little crazy and paid very little attention to what I was saying. He took a bunch of wrong courses, got refusals, and skipped obstacles, but at least he had a lot of fun :)

Before going to Jumpers, we met a doggie friend, so Philip got to play and get some of his craziness out. He was much more focused on me during the Jumpers run, but still messed up the weave pole entry earning us an NQ, though the rest of the run was very good.

On Sunday I made sure to bring Philip's toy with me, and it made a huge difference in his craziness level. Unfortunately, the beginning of the Standard course was a little tricky, and I think I should have handled it differently, but in any case Philip ended up taking a tunnel one jump too early, earning himself a wrong course and an NQ.

Last but not least, Sunday Jumpers was a nice course with only a couple of tricky spots, and Philip attacked it like a pro, made no mistakes, and earned a Q. The only Q of the weekend, this was our 3rd Q in Excellent A JWW, so Philip finished is AXJ title and will be moving up to Excelled B JWW!

I find it funny how his ability switched all of a sudden, and Jumpers got better than Standard after all the earlier struggles. I wonder if it'll switch back sometime, or better yet even out to both courses being good :)

October AKC Trial

Oops, I was sure I already posted this, but I guess not... Sorry about that, we had another trial two weekends ago, so here it is!

Out Saturday started out hazy and drizzly, but Philip and I needed to get to the trial, so we packed up into the car and went on our way. A little while back, the little toothy monster (a.k.a. Philip) ate through his portable soft-sided crate, leaving only his bulky wire crate at my disposal. I brought it along to the September trial, but it was a bit of a pain to drag around, so I decided to go crate-less this time. It wasn't hot out, and Philip comfortably stayed in the car for the few minutes that I needed to walk the course without him - the rest of the time, I simply held onto his leash and played "bunny" with him (more on that later). Thankfully, it wasn't wet or rainy at the trial site despite the drizzle at home :)

First up was a Jumpers course, and it looked like a fairly smooth run, so I gave it a quick walk-through and got Philip ready to go. Unfortunately he knocked a bar at the 4th jump, and subsequently messed up the next jump as well (probably because I was looking back rather than focusing on my handling, therefore doing a very ungraceful cross). Other than that little mishap though, the run went much better than most of our runs in the past few month, so even though this one was an NQ, I was optimistic for the next course.

The Standard course was also laid out with a good flow, though had a tricky ending - the dogs were running out towards the last jump, but had to take a detour to the right and turn around, taking the last jump backwards. I saw several dogs sprint straight over that jump and mess up their run. Philip started off at a good pace (not super-fast as he's capable of, but that's how I prefer him right now as he gets a little crazy when he gets fast). When we reached the table he hesitated getting up on it and ended up slowly jumping up from the left side. I was sure a refusal would be called for that, but the judge deemed it clean (I guess Philip never actually stopped dead in his tracks). After that, we had a few jumps to go around before reaching the tricky ending. At one point I wasn't paying much too much attention, but momentarily noticed that Philip headed for the A-Frame off to the side instead of the jump I was heading towards. In sudden realization of that, I shrieked at him, and to my surprise he turned right around and took the jump, whew! Lastly, I made sure to stay clear to the side at the end to lure him away from the incorrect ending, and it went very smoothly. This was it - our first Q in Excellent Standard :) Overall, a very good day considering all of Philip's latest antics over the past few months!

Sunday Jumpers course had a couple of tight turns, but turned out to have a very nice flow once we got to running it. Philip was very focused on me and did everything perfectly - not a single scream was required on my part, his weaves were good, he didn't veer off to the sides, and all the bars stayed up. We haven't had such a nice clean run in a while, so I was very proud of him. Needless to say, it was a Q!

The Standard course was tricky - it had a dog walk and a tunnel right after it, but the dogs were to go off to the side and onto a table before coming back to the tunnel from another side. I was a bit worried that Philip would dart into the tunnel (his favorite thing!), but when we got running he actually listened, and even did the table a little better than the day before. Out of the tunnel we got to the weaves, and Philip started out really nicely, but popped out of the very last pole earning us a refusal - what a bummer! :( The rest of the run was very nice, and had it not been for that pole, we would've had another good run. Alas, we got an NQ.

So now we have 2 Qs in Excellent A JWW, and 1 Q in Excellent A Standard!

September AKC Trial

This weekend Philip and I went to a new venue for our Agility trial. Well, at least it was new for us since we've never been there before :) This place was a horse arena of sorts, and so it had dirt on the floor rather than the usual grass that we are used to. It's also a covered arena, which was awesome, as there was no scorching heat! Overall, I was a little unsure how Philip would take to a new surface, but decided I would give it a try anyway, just so that we know for the future.

Turns out the dirt didn't phase him at all, I don't even think he noticed a difference. They were good about raking over it between the different height classes, and that kept everything fairly smooth. You should have seen the holes that the bigger dogs were creating in sharp turn spots and through the weave poles though! It's too bad I didn't have my camera with me...

On Saturday, the Excellent Standard course was a little tough, but not as bad as I've seen before. Little dogs were on fairly early in the morning, so Philip was full of energy. Unfortunately, while many people want their dogs to be fired up, mine tends to go nuts when he is too energetic. This run was not an exception - Philip took off making up his own course and having a grand time, but paying absolutely zero attention to me and making lots of mistakes. He was so bad that I actually gave up and took him to the exit before finishing the last 3 obstacles. This is the first time I've ever not finished a course with him. I used to wonder why many handlers do that, and now I know... When the dog is being so ridiculous, it's only frustrating to keep going, and detrimental to everyone involved, so no point in continuing. Suffices to say this was a non-qualifying run.

After the Standard craziness, I moved Philip's crate out from the covered area and set him out to bake in the sun a bit. Seeing as it helped a little at our last trial, I figured it wouldn't hurt to try this time either. Meanwhile, I got ready for our first Excellent Jumpers run. The course looked really nice, so I had some hope for Philip. When time came to run though, he again took off without paying much attention to me - sigh... After a refusal and a wrong course within the first 5 obstacles though, he got his mind back and finished the rest of the run nicely. If it wasn't for his silliness, we would've had a great run, but alas - maybe he didn't get enough sun.

Sunday started off with Standard again, and again Philip had way too much energy. Just to quickly sum up the terror since my memory is still fresh - he took a wrong course by crossing behind me (bad dog!), hesitated getting up onto the table, messed up the weaves entry twice, was seemingly terrified of and super slow on the teeter, jumped off the A-Frame while I was trying to front cross (thereby ending up behind me again), and finished off by completely skipping one of the jumps that was right in front of him. Sounds like a wonderful run, doesn't it? Yeah... another NQ.

Last but not least was our second try at Excellent Jumpers. The course looked quite a bit harder, and had a repeating pattern of two jumps that the dog had to take 3 times, twice coming out into the far end of a tunnel (usually not good for Philip). I watched the dogs before us run and devised a plan - one with lots of running for me, but one that should help Philip stay on track (if he pays attention!). Philip started off very fast again, but I yelled at him as usual, and this time he seemed to have gotten his head back right as he was about to take a wrong course. The mistake was averted and I took him along the planned route. When we reached the tunnel first time around I called him away pretending like we'd go in another direction, then yelled "Tunnel!" as he was running past the far end. You should have seen the momentary confused look on his face, but surprising it worked, and he darted into the tunnel as I repeated the command - so far so good. Out of the tunnel we came to the weaves, which he took very slowly but thankfully accurately. Then we were back around the jumps towards the tunnel for a second time. Again I pulled the same trick on Philip, and again he gave me a very confused look, but yet again the strategy worked well! A few more jumps out of the tunnel and he crossed the finish line. Another Corgi owner watched our run and I asked him if the judge called anything (those tunnel confusions could have easily been refusals), but he said he didn't see anything. Excited, I waited for the results, and indeed we got a Q with no mistakes, and even a first place :)

Funny thing is I didn't have much hope left for Philip before this JWW run, so I packed up his crate shortly after walking the course in anticipation of a quick get away after a failure. The guy sitting next to me noticed it and said "Packing up already? What if you have to wait for a ribbon?". I laughed and said that in the unlikely event of that happening, I would just wait with Philip's leash in hand - I think he foresaw the future :)

So now we have our very first Excellent Q. It's funny how Philip has struggled so much in Open JWW, but got a Q in Excellent JWW on his second try. At the same time, he started off great in Standard, and has been in Excellent Standard since May, but still has zero Qs in that - go figure! Ah well, we'll get it eventually, and this whole weekend of frustration was totally worth it for that Q! Let's just hope Philip's energy madness isn't gonna stick at next trials.

August AKC Trial

Philip and I went to another trial in mid-August, so let's play a little catch up :)

This was a 2-judge trial and had FAST scheduled for both days, so I was excited and entered all three run both days. Shortly after entering, my instructor warned me that this particular club (one holding this trial) was notorious for being very slow. So when the time came to go to the trial, I had prepared for things to be a bit slower than usual, but how bad can it be with two judges and two rings, right?

Excellent standard run was to be the first run for Philip, and I calculated that getting there around 9 should give plenty of time for previous runs to finish. When I got there though, I noticed that they weren't even half way done with the previous runs… As a matter of fact, we didn't get to our first run until about noon! I was so frustrated at this point, that I was ready to just pack up and leave, but I was already there and the runs were paid for, so I stuck it out.

Our run didn't go so well, probably partially to my frustration with all the waiting, though I had a feeling Philip must have gotten worked up too. He wasn't paying any attention to me - running totally wild and taking obstacles he wasn't supposed to. He went so far that he ran for a jump, and right when you would think he was going to jump, he just changed directions and went right around it. Sigh… of course a shameful NQ.

My instructor watch our run and said that Philip looks like he has too much energy. Not surprising really, considering he'd been sitting in his crate for 3 good hours waiting for something to happen. So she suggested I have him sit out in the sun, so that he "bakes" a little and hopefully mellows out. I estimated an hour wait or so for our JWW run, maybe two seeing as to how slow these folk were, so I sat us out in the sunny spot to wait.

Of course this was all wishful thinking as we ended up waiting another 3 hours before the Open JWW ring was even open for walking. I wasn't prepared to sit in the sun that long, so I had long retired back into the shade by then. The jumpers course didn't look too hard, but the sun-baking was all reversed in the shade, and Philip again made a fool of himself on the ring, earning us another NQ.

It was close to 4pm when we were done with the run and I had made previous plans to meet a friend at 5pm (I was sure we'd be done by 5, even one-judge trials usually finish by then!). Of course, we still had FAST scheduled, but before that the Novice dogs had to finish their Standard and Jumpers runs. So seeing how slow the day had been, and unable to stay past 5 anyway, I decided against waiting, and we left to go home. Good thing too, as I found out the next day that the FAST dogs didn't finish until almost 7pm! Seven!!!

Sunday morning I took my time getting to the trial as I now knew just how slow things were trudging along there. I believe we got to the site around 10:30am, and still ended up sitting around for a couple of hours before our turn to run. This time I came prepared for sun-baking though, so I armed myself with sun screen and a hat, and took Philip with me to watch the other dogs in the sun rather than resting in the crate.

The Standard course looked tough - it started out with a jump follow by two C-shaped tunnels right behind it to each side, with exits and entranced facing each other, and then another jump straight out. The dogs were supposed to go over the jump, to the far end of the left tunnel, out the close end and into the far end of the right tunnel, and then out the close end and over the far jump. I'll see if I can dig up a picture, but basically the dog had to do a figure eight in the tunnels between the two jumps. When Philip's turn came to run, I set him up for the jump, and lead out towards a tunnel. I called him over the jump pointing to the tunnel, and he ran right past me to the next jump - sigh! I don't think he was even listening to what I was saying, though he was a little better for the rest of the course.

Now, the jumpers ring was moving quite a bit faster on Sunday, and the Open runs ended up catching up to our Excellent Standard. I has them move Philip up, and still ended up having almost no time to walk the Jumpers course - only got to walk it once before being kicked off. Of course I could have asked them to let me walk more seeing as it wasn't my fault, but I didn't want to hold up the trial any longer. Instead I parked Philip in the sun for some more baking and watched other dogs in front of us to memorize the course better.

The course wasn't very difficult, and I paid good attention to the could of tricky spots while watching gopher run. Our turn came up and I set Philip at the start line to lead out a little. As I called him over the jump I saw that the "baking" was actually working! He was a little slower than usual and almost looked slow-motion, this was a good sign. I decided not to push him and just went along with his pace. He gracefully took every jump that I pointed to, mastered the weaves on the first try, and paid good attention to me even when I almost messed up one of the turns.

We finished the run cleanly! I couldn't believe it! Oh yes, let me remind you that we've had 2 legs in Open JWW since May, and been needing the one last one for all this time. This was it, Philip got his last needed Open JWW Q!!! It was practically surreal - I probably made lots of weird noises and I cheered in excitement, and our instructor and a few other people in the know clapped for us. All the waiting was worth it to me at this point, finally we are out into both Excellent levels, and it even means we no longer have to stay as long at the trials waiting for the Open run. Yay! Philip got a beautiful ribbon for his new title too :)

The day wasn't over yet though, we still had out FAST run to go, and this one also needed only one more leg to move out of Novice. Philip has never had any problems with FAST, but it's offered so rarely that we just haven't had a chance for 3 Qs. Seeing as he was finally doing well, I was determined to wait this one out. I don't remember exactly now, but I think I waited another 4 hours before it was finally our turn to run FAST. Meanwhile, I baked Philip in the sun some more :) The course was very easy as usual, and Philip did great. I decided not to wait for results and took off as soon as we finished our run, but I did check to make sure the scribe sheet was correct, and the results came in affirmative a few days later - Philip earned a total of 64 points, and took first place, finishing our Novice FAST title.

So there you have it, our very long weekend, but one that was totally worth it in the end. Next time this club holds a trial, I will most definitely not entering FAST though, as there is no way I would purposely want to wait around till 6-7pm again.

July AKC Trial 2

Well, we spent another weekend doing Agility, so here's the usual recap :)

This was a two-judge trial again, which was really nice, and it also had a FAST course on Saturday! We get these so rarely in our area, as a matter of fact this was just our third try at it since we started competing in January without missing any local trials.

Hold the horses (or dogs?) though - we had our Standard and JWW runs first. Both were simply a disaster on Saturday. So much so, that I lost track of all the mistakes Philip managed to squeeze into just a couple of minutes. From what I remember though, Standard included a couple of wrong courses, a refusal on the weaves, and even a table fault! Philip actually decided to get off the table right before "Go" and we had to do it all over again - ugh! The jumpers course started just like I thought, with an immediate wrong course to a very lucrative tunnel. To top off the embarrassment though, Philip pranced in a circle before getting back on track, and also went completely around one of the jumps towards the end. I'm pretty sure his mind was on another planet during these two runs... It goes without saying that both runs were NQs.

Now back to the FAST run - we are still in Novice (due to its rareness), and the course was extremely easy. The send portion was a tunnel followed by a jump and was no problem at all. It was worth 9 and 3 points respectively, plus the 20 bonus points, for a total of 32. So we only needed to gather 18 other points for the required 50 to get a Q. These were easy to get on the way to and from the send area. So, going all the way around the outside of the course, this path would give us a total of 53 points. Just looking for an easy Q, this was my plan, but Philip seemed to have missed the 4-point jump at the beginning. I thought I heard the judge call it, but I didn't see him jump it, so just to be sure, I added a little extra path to our plan and had him go through the 10-point tunnel on the way out. This way we would have had enough if the 4-pointer didn't count, but it turned out that counted too, so we finished with 63 points, got our Q, and took second place. Only one more Novice Q to go in FAST!

On Sunday, Philip started off with a great Standard run. He listened to me well, got the weave poles entry spot on, and held his contacts as needed. I heard him tick a bar with his nails, but hoped for the best, and while that one did in fact stay up, unfortunately he stealthily knocked another one in the middle of the course. It's really too bad as this was a beautiful run and we would have gotten our very first Q if it wasn't for that one bar. But alas - another NQ instead.

The Jumpers course started out nicely as well, Philip was paying attention and got the weaves right again. The end was a little tricky though, having to turn away from me and wrap around a jump. Philip managed to knock a bar while maneuvering through that turn, and another at the finish line. So NQ for us, and we are still hanging in Open JWW with just one more leg to go.

Oh, and here's something interesting from the weekend - the Excellent JWW course on Saturday had the most curious tunnel set up. There was one tunnel in a fairly tight C shape, and another in a wider C going right around the back of the first one. The dogs approached the outside tunnel first and then had to do a U-turn over a couple of jumps and into the inside tunnel. I really wish we would have been in that class just so that I could try it - it looked fun and challenging!

July AKC Trial 1

I hope you all have a wonderful 4th of July! Philip and I spent a good portion of it going to another Agility trial :)

This weekend was a two judge trial so it went by much faster than the one judge trials that we usually have. We had an early start at 8:30am both days, but it was nice since the weather stayed cooler.

Saturday's Excellent Standard run didn't look too difficult, but unfortunately Philip knocked down the panel jump right at the first sequence. It was weird because he doesn't usually knock panels, but it did look like he took an awkward approach to it, so that might have been the problem. When we got to the table, the judge counted it off really fast, which I thought was funny, but I understood that she was saving time since we had NQed already anyway :) I actually wish more judges would do that so the trials can move a bit faster! At the end of the run, Philip messed up his weave pole entry yet again as well. I really don't know what's with him and the weaves lately...

The jumpers run looked really nice on Saturday, and I was very hopeful, but again Philip managed to knock the fifth jump in the course - sigh. Shortly after, he messed up the weaves entry for a good measure, and then I remembered that I'm supposed to be hurrying him through (he goes at a snail's pace in the weaves, and we are trying to break the habit in class). So I picked up the speed and he did okay, but then I continued going fast and totally forgot one of the jumps we needed to take - oops. So I gave Philip another wrong course and a refusal, went back to fix it, and we finally finished with 6 seconds over time!

Sunday's standard course was kind of crazy looking. The course was laid out in such a way that we had to run on a spiral (around a circle twice while closing in towards the center of the course), and then turn out of it for the finish. This presented a couple of lucrative wrong courses, one of which was a jump with the A-Frame straight ahead from it and a tunnel to the left. The first time around we were supposed to keep going straight, but on the second pass turn into the tunnel. When I watched other dogs run before us, all the handlers did a front cross between the jump and the tunnel to change their dog's direction. It was a good choice, and if I had a well trained dog, I'd probably go for it too, but I knew in my mind that Philip would prance for the A-Frame before I had time to front cross if I tried that. So instead I decided to hold back and cross behind Philip once I got him to the tunnel. I don't think I saw anyone else do it that way, but it worked wonderfully for us! Everything was going great through the whole spiral and I could almost taste the Q, but unfortunately Philip messed up the weaves entry, again! In retrospect, I might have messed him up there because I was being cautious and told him to weave 3 times. I think he knew what to do after my first command and might have gotten confused when I repeated it. Oh well, so close, but no Q because of that of course. Still, this was a very good run, we both handled some very difficult parts nicely, and there was no knocked bars!

Then we had a mishap on the field... skip this paragraph if you don't want to read a hurt dog story (I'm tearing up just thinking about it). While I was walking the Open JWW, some Excellent dogs were still running Standard, and I happened to be looking at them as a lab was running and took the teeter at a wrong time. His handler was trying to call him off, so he stopped in the middle and tried to turn around. Being a big dog, his right back foot slipped off the board, he flinched and stepped on the upper side of the board to catch balance. This in turn made the teeter start tilting and it pinched his fallen leg between the board and the metal supports. Words can't explain the screaming that followed this, and to add to the terror he fell off, completely twisting his stuck leg, as he lay there screaming. Of course, everyone rushed to his help, and while it probably only took seconds, it seemed like forever before they finally freed his leg. He couldn't step on it for a while and got carried out, but I found him later with lots of people huddled around him. They were icing his leg, checking the range of movement and feeding him lots of cookies. Thankfully he seemed okay - no breaks or dislocations, what a lucky boy!

This incident just goes to show what a dangerous sport this is for dogs. It might seem like all fun and games, but there are so many things that can go wrong. Even with all the rules that are there to ensure safety, we can't foresee everything. Please be careful with your dogs!

When our Open JWW run started after this, I think I was a bit out of it because I totally messed up my handling at the beginning. I planned to do a front cross, forgot about it, and ended up with a very awkward cross behind instead. This caused Philip to turn the wrong way while looking for me, and earned him a refusal on the following jump. Shortly after, we approached the tunnel - Philip was supposed to go into the far end of it, and I tried holding him back, but he was focused on the close end, and no yelling on my part could turn his head around. Tunnel entries like this have definitely been a problem for us, but we've been practicing them in class and doing well, so I'm not sure if I did something to cause it, or if he was just being a brat. The rest of the run went smoothly - no knocked bars, and amazingly, Philip hit the weave poles right on target this time, so that was a nice surprise of the weekend :) Since no wrong courses are allowed in JWW though, this was an automatic NQ.

So again we had a weekend with four NQs, but we have another trial this coming weekend, and I really hope we'll break this no-Q spell then!

June AKC Trial

Whew, it's been a busy couple of weeks, hence the lack of posts - sorry about that. We went to another trial this last weekend, and it was certainly very eventful, so let's get to it :)

Most trials in this area are organized in a way that Excellent is split into two size groups (4"-16" and 20"-26"), and in one-judge trials, the big dogs usually get to go in the morning, followed by the smaller dogs. Every once in a while they switch it up though, and the small dogs go first thing in the morning. So that was the case this time, and Philip's Excellent Standard run was supposed to be around 9-9:30am.

For some reason, I stayed up pretty late on Friday, so waking up on Saturday was tough. I managed to sleep in later than I had planned, so I rushed out the door once I finally woke up. Of course that meant I'd mess something up... and so I forgot to bring a bottle of water and a bowl for Philip - sigh. Thankfully, there was water available and Philip can drink from the palm of my hand pretty well! To add to my troubles, I got lost a couple of times on the way...

When I had finally made it to the trial, the Excellent Standard ring was already being walked, so I rushed to grab a map and survey the course. This was the toughest course I've seen thus far - with several tight turns and lucrative off-course obstacles. I talked with my instructor and she recommended a couple of interesting maneuvers that I hadn't practiced. She is obviously more experienced though, so I trust her opinion, and practiced the moves while walking the course. Funny thing though is that she was running one of her own dogs before it was my turn, and I saw her mess up one of those tough spots.

We were soon ready to run, and Philip started off pretty well (he seems to always start well). However, when he got to the table, he got up on it and flew right off - something he's never done before. I couldn't believe he did that (I still can't!), but nonetheless, I got him back on the table and continued the course. The first tough spot was coming off a jump into the chute, with a tunnel right behind it. Due to the approach, the dogs were coming off of the jump pretty wide, and naturally aiming for the tunnel rather than the chute (and many took that wrong course). The plan was to turn back before aligning Philip with the chute, and it actually worked pretty well - he went right for the chute. Right after was the second tricky spot (the harder of the two). Here, Philip was coming off of the teeter, with a jump right in front of him, but was supposed to take the weaves to the right. My original thought was to pull him right off, but our instructor recommended lining him up with the weaves before turning, so as to not mess up the weaves entry. This is the spot her dog messed up (taking the jump), and of course Philip also went straight for the jump. Looking back, while this plan was good for an experienced dog/handler team, I probably would have been better off pulling him off to the side right away. Oh well, it didn't matter at that point anyway - NQ with a table fault and a wrong course for Philip.

The Open jumpers course looked very nice - it was laid out such that the whole course could be run without ever switching sides, and I was sure we'd do great on it. Philip was the first dog on the line, had a nice start, but unfortunately knocked down the 4th jump bar. I was hoping that after his wonderful performance at USDAA this month, the bar knocking would stop, but there it was - messing with our runs yet again. Philip ran the rest of the course beautifully, but of course the bar gave us an NQ yet again.

On Sunday, I got up on time and had no trouble getting there, but came to find an even more difficult Excellent Standard course (and here I thought that Saturday's course was bad). There was a spot of two jumps next to each other, and the dog was to go over this place twice, taking the less intuitive jump both times. I talked with our instructor again, and she recommended layering (leaving the wrong jump in between Philip and me and pointing to the correct one) the first time, and rear-crossing the second time. The rear-cross seemed like a good idea, but I wasn't sure Philip would ignore a layered jump - we have only practiced such a thing once in class. So I came up with a second plan that would simply require a lot more running from me, and decided I would choose which to do once I get there.

More than half of the dogs before us had messed up the jumps, so it wasn't looking good. When our turn came, I was ready with both plans, but Philip had another plan in mind - before even getting to the pair of jumps, he went way off course and climbed the A-Frame while I screamed "Philip, over here! Philip! Philip!" at the top of my lungs. I could have done cartwheels and he would have still ignored me... So I got him off the frame and decided that since the run is a mess up anyway, I would try the layering thing. What do you know - it worked wonderfully! Philip didn't even look at the jump in between us and went straight for the correct one! Later, he messed up the weaves entry though, and knocked a panel jump down. I had some iffy handling too, and the second pass through the evil pair of jumps didn't go as smoothly as the first, but we got it right anyway. Of course this was an NQ, but weirdly enough all the mess-ups were not what I was expecting at all! To put it in my instructor's words - "what a bad dog!"

The eventful part of the weekend came soon after the Standard run - as the big dogs were finishing up the JWW course, someone pointed to some smoke on the nearby hill. Was it a just a BBQ? Nope - it was a brush fire, a quickly spreading one too!


I checked if someone had called 911 (they had!) and we all watched while the big dogs got ready for Standard. The fire trucks seemed to have taken an extremely long time to show up, but we finally heard sirens. It was pretty funny actually - most of the dogs broke into howls when the siren approached, what a chorus! What shocked me though, is that some cars weren't moving over for the fire trucks, on a two-lane road at that (one each way)! What's wrong with people? Can't they see the burning hill?

More fire trucks followed, as well as a helicopter and a couple of planes. Another helicopter and plane joined later as well. It was pretty cool to watch them put out the fire - red fire retardant being dumped from the planes, water dumped from the helicopters, and firefighters with hoses on the ground (though there are apparently no fire hydrants in that area, so they didn't have the needed pressure).


The whole ordeal continued for several hours. The helicopters flew over to a nearby reservoir to pick up some water and came back to dump it over and over again. I was amazed at how well these guys can aim the water! We had to continue with the trial of course, but some dogs didn't enjoy all the noise one bit. At one point, a helicopter flew super close to us - it was pretty scary, and the dog on course was really terrified. Thankfully, the judge let them re-run though.


The main fire was contained and put out eventually, and it was nice and quiet by the time the Open JWW run started. It was a pretty good course, a bit harder than Saturday, but still not bad. However, Philip still managed to take another wrong course while ignoring my screams - sigh! No other mistakes, but since no wrong courses are allowed in JWW, it was another NQ for us.

As we got ready to leave, I could still see the firefighters roaming the hill, checking for any left over hot spots, but thankfully nothing flared up. So we ended the weekend with no Qs, but at least the fire ordeal added some fun :)

May AKC Trial 2

Sigh. I wish I could say this weekend was as awesome as the last one, but it was actually quite the opposite...

The larger (20" and up) dogs ran Excellent first, so we arrived around 10am on Saturday for the smaller dogs turn. The trial was moving slowly though, so when we arrived, the big dogs has just started their Standard runs. With time on hands, I went to watch what we'll be doing when our turn comes. I stood by the side of the ring and watched dogs NQ one after the other - they were mostly taking wrong courses in the cluster of jumps that the judge had set up. I knew that couldn't be good, and went to see the course map to figure out the correct path. The part where many failed indeed looked tricky - the dogs had to run through a "box" of jumps a couple of times, taking tricky turns while being tempted by a wrong jump right in front of them. The NQ rate was pretty astounding to me, but maybe it's common on Excellent courses - I haven't watched very many, so I can't really say.

I walked the course while the small dogs ran Excellent JWW, and I just had a feeling I wouldn't call Philip off those tempting wrong courses correctly. Our turn came and we got to the first box approach - Philip wanted to take the wrong jump, and I barely manages to call him off. We went through a few more obstacles and approached the box again - this time Philip needed to ignore a jump and go to the table instead. I practically did a cartwheel to get his attention, but he took the wrong jump anyway, happy as a clam. He later missed his Weave Poles entry as well, but it didn't matter at that point - NQ for us.

The JWW course looked a bit nicer, though I wasn't expecting much from it either. Philip took off nicely, but as he went over the 3rd or 4th jump, I heard my least favorite sound - he hit a bar! I always finish the course even if we mess up, so we went on. A few jumps later we were running past the judge, and she suddenly said "It stayed up!" to my back. I almost stopped dead in my tracks to make sure I heard her correctly, but thankfully realized that if it was in fact true, we had better keep going. We reached the weaves, and Philip messed up his entry again, but did it right on second try. The rest of the course was clean, and so I went to my instructor - "Did it really stay up!?" I asked. Yes, yes, it really did! What a nice gesture on the judge's part to reassure me, she must've heard me sigh when Philip hit the bar. I still can't believe it, but much to my amazement, we got a Q with just one refusal on the weaves!

On Sunday I took my time getting to the site, and still ended up getting there too early. I took the course maps, and while the Standard course looked nicer this time, it again had a couple of tricky spots. The start of the run was over two jumps, around the second one, and back to the first - Philip did that part nicely. Then he went on the dog walk and I wanted him to wait for me, so I could switch sides to take him into the correct side of the tunnel. I was worried he wouldn't stop since he loves tunnels, and indeed he tried to plow right on through, but I managed to get him to pause before the tunnel and got him into the right end. Right out of the tunnel we had the weaves, Philip had a nice approach to it, but still decided to mess up his entry yet again (what's with the weaves this weekend!). That of course meant an NQ for us, but I wanted to fix it and took him back. Again, he did it wrong, and again the third time. I got frustrated at this point, and so I had him skip the weaves all together. He ran nicely afterward, though I slacked on getting him to one of the jumps, earning us even more errors, but this one was entirely my fault. Then I rushed him at the end since the buzzer went off and he knocked a bar to add on to our troubles.

The JWW course looked fairly smooth and I felt good about it, but unfortunately Philip knocked the very first bar (I actually saw this one go down). As my instructor later said, I must have been "mourning the bar" after that, as I totally messed up my handling causing a few more errors. Philip did get the weave entry right this time, but managed to pop out early instead (ugh!). I didn't bother fixing it, but in retrospect, I probably should have, as to not teach him that it's okay to mess up. Actually, I probably shouldn't have continued running the course at all while thinking about the bar. I'll know better next time.

Oh well, this was a pretty embarrassing weekend, but we'll just try and forget all about it, and wait for next time instead :)

May AKC Trial 1

We had an awesome trial this last weekend! Lot's of exciting news, so let's get to it :)

On Saturday, we had an Open Standard run and a Novice JWW run. It's been a while since our last trial, but if you remember from my last recap, Philip only had 1 more leg to go in each in order to move up. The whole day before our runs, I was thinking that if Philip would Q in Standard and not in JWW, we'd end up in Excellent Standard and still Novice Jumpers the following day. That would mean we'd have to be at the trial all day, and I really didn't want to have to do that.

Both courses looked very nice on the maps, and soon enough we were ready for our Standard run. Philip was the first dog on the line, so I didn't get to see any possible mistakes a previous handler would make, but I wasn't too worried. We took it at a good pace, and Philip went over everything nicely, letting me get all my turns in as I wanted. He did mess up his weave pole entry, so I had to get him to start over, but he went through smoothly on the second try. Otherwise a very nice run, and since 1 refusal is still okay in Open, we got our Q. That completed Philip's Open Agility title, and we request a move up to Excellent A for Sunday!

The JWW run was a very nice and easy layout - with just one pinwheel maneuver, and the rest as nice straight lines. Again, Philip was the first dog on the line, and I crossed my fingers that we would pass and not have to be there the whole day on Sunday. Off to a good start, and again Philip missed his weave pole entry. I remembered my mistake from an earlier trial and made sure he wouldn't back-weave this time. After a couple of tries, the weaves were done right, and Philip practically flew the rest of the way! Since weaves don't count in Novice, this was a clean Q, and we finally had our Novice Agility Jumper title! Lucky for me, we moved up to Open JWW for Sunday as I hoped :)

We had to get to the trial much earlier than usual on Sunday in order to get to the Excellent run. I almost overslept, but thankfully Philip's fussing woke me up just in time :)

We got to the site and I went to walk the Excellent Standard course. Again, the run was laid out very nicely, but it certainly had a couple of tricky spots. With many dogs participating, Philip wasn't first this time. I got to watch other handlers before me and picked up a couple of good moves that I ended up using to our advantage, so that really helped. Philip started off to a beautiful run, you wouldn't even know he was a first-timer there. He looked to me for all the commands, he did the tricky spots gracefully, he even hit the weave poles spot on! I was excited - maybe we'd get a Q on the first try, but those dreams shuttered as Philip went over the last jump before the dog walk. You probably guessed it already - he knocked a bar down. What a bummer, but nonetheless, I am very proud of that run! He did very well for his first try at an Excellent course. He looked to me at every obstacle and he did everything like I asked. We'll get that Q another time!

Last, but not least, we also had our first Open JWW course. We were first on the line again, and this one started off to a tricky turn into the back end of the tunnel. Thankfully, Philip has a very solid lead out, so I had no trouble walking out to the tunnel and directing him to the correct entrance. Then we were off to some jumps and weaves (good on first try!), and a final turn out to the finish line. Funny thing happened here - I meant to get a front-cross in between a couple of jumps, but somehow spaced out. This put me on the wrong side, so I pushed Philip to the next two jumps with really awkward back crosses. What an ugly move on my part, but amazingly enough, Philip handled it like a pro (probably thinking I'm insane), and we finished cleanly. No faults at all in this run - a beautiful clean Q and 1st place for Philip :)

So there you have it - we got 3 out of 4 Qs this weekend, and Philip earned his OA and NAJ titles now. Another trial next weekend - I can't wait!

April AKC Trial - Sunday

Part 2 - read about Saturday's runs here.

We had just two runs on Sunday since FAST wasn't being offered, so the day went by much faster, but it certainly had it's own surprises.

We started off with Open Standard again, and this was a strange run - with a total of four tunnels! Somehow, I just had this feeling that Philip would mess up at least one of those... So off we went on the course - no problems to start with. When we got to the table, Philip ran up way too fast and flew right off of it, earning us a table fault. I got him back on it, and we continued the run back on track. Now, one of the multiple tunnels was the very last obstacle on the course, and with the way the approach worked out, I was on the outside of the curve (it's safer to be on the inside). The curve was more like an L than a C, so the wrong end wasn't too inviting and I hoped for the best, but of course Philip disagreed. He actually went out of his way to take the wrong end, ugh! This meant several things - for one he got a refusal for going past the plane of the entry, he also got a wrong course for going the wrong way, and lastly he tripped the finish line timer before finishing the course by running into the exit. I turned him around, got him to take it the right way, and basically expected an NQ for all the mistakes.

However, on my way out, someone congratulated me saying it was probably a Q. I asked why, and they said that one of each type of error was okay to have in Open, so we were probably fine, hmm... I went to my instructor, asking was she thought, and she said she wasn't sure, but yes - it was probably good, so I should go see the results. Our next run was coming up though, so I figured this could wait and went to get ready for Jumpers.

The Jumpers course was medium difficulty, but I felt confident - we were at a lower jump height and Philip did great the day before. We got to the start line and took off. Immediately, I messed up on of the front cross I had planned, and then another, but Philip was a trooper and went the right way both times. Then I heard it - the dreadful sound of his claws hitting the jump bar. Did it fall? I didn't have time to look back, so we kept on going. We crossed the last jump and I looked back on the course - the jump setter was running towards a jump, to fix a fallen bar... Oh, Philip, what am I going to do with him? As our instructor put it, I'll keep him :) Still, here we are with a yet another NQ in JWW for knocking a bar, this time at only 8" off the ground!

After the run, I finally went to see the results for the Standard course - we had an NQ, and one of each faults, oh well. I updated our instructor (Anne) on the results and went to pack up for the day. As I was coming back to pick up the crate, I see Anne coming towards me. "I saved your leg" she says. Huh? So it turns out that after I had told her about our results, another lady that overheard us thought about the whole one-of-each-error thing. The rules did indeed say that one of each error for a total of 3 was okay in Open, so why the NQ? Anne decided to go see our scribe sheet, and apparently there was an F (failure to perform, immediate NQ) on there as well, which is why we had an NQ. So she went to talk to the judge - where did the F come from? Answer - back in the days of non-electronic timers, the rules were that tripping the finish line early would earn you an F, but Anne didn't think that rule held for electronic timers. The judge told her to find it in the rule book as she wasn't aware, so Anne dug out the rule book and guess what - no F when electronic timers are used! So the judge was mistaken and would change our result to a Q! I waited while the poor secretary made a yet another change for my prince of a dog, reprinted the results yet again, and we happily walked away with a Q and a 1st place. All thanks to Anne!!! It's really great to have an awesome and knowledgeable instructor :)

April AKC Trial - Saturday

Well, we had a very interesting weekend, lots of stories to tell, so I'm going to split this up into two parts - one for each day.

After Philip had finished his title at the last trial, I had to email the secretary of this trial to move him up to Open - no biggie, we got it covered. When we got to the trial on Saturday, I figured out we needed to move a height down (read the previous post for details), so again I went to bug the secretary. This was a more complicated change, but she seemed to have gotten it down, so off we went.

First up was the Open Standard run - I thought it wasn't quite as hard as the one last weekend, but there were still plenty of tricky spots. We started off to a good run, and close to the end was the dog walk, ending to a curved tunnel straight ahead, which would turn the dog back around to the weave poles which were right next to the dog walk. I approached on the outside of the turn, and my plan was to stick a front cross in right before the tunnel while Philip was finishing the dog walk. Good plan, right? Except that Philip zoomed up and over the dog walk at the fastest I've ever seen, then he totally ditched his stopping point and sprinted to the wrong end of the tunnel, all before I could interfere. So I wait for him to get out of the tunnel so I can send him back in the right way, he pops out and sprint back on the dog walk - duh! At that point I finally get his attention, he turns his head, falls over from the dog walk up-ramp (he's fine, but it sure looked dramatic!), and then finishes the course with no other mistakes. Of course that little feat of his gave us two wrong courses, so NQ for Mr. Dramatic.

Next run was Novice JWW, and we were going at 8" height, so I hoped for no knocked bars this time, and I was right! Woohoo, Philip had a beautiful clean run, finally getting a second Q, only one more to go! Will the new lower jump height save us from all our troubles? We could only wait to find out the next day :) Oh, but the fun doesn't end there - when I went to see the results, I couldn't find Philip on the sheet for while. Finally I saw him under the 12" height, but we ran 8" so I was confused. I thought I'd go check with the secretary (who knew us by name already, ha!), and after a little double checking, she figured out that she had changed our entries only on one of the computers, while the JWW results were entered on the other one. So more changes for them to make, reprinting the results, etc., but thankfully not messing up any placing since Philip was the only dog who got a Q in both 8" and 12" heights.

We then had another run on Saturday - Novice FAST. I think I've mentioned before that FAST isn't offered very often, and other than our run at the mud trial (which basically doesn't count!), this was our first real try at it. I was surprised at how easy the course looked, with big-point items right at the beginning, and the send bonus going for a total of 30 points (out of 50 needed), so I wasn't worried about getting enough points at all. The send bonus was a jump followed by a tunnel, which also didn't look too hard at all. I devised a plan of action, and we stuck right to it, with Philip doing everything I asked of him perfectly, what a beautiful run! We definitely had a Q for the run, and we had gathered a total of 67 points, but since the places are determined by points, I waited to see what happens with that. There was only one other dog in our jump height, and when the results came up it showed 66 points them, so we got first place by just 1 point!

Read about Sunday's runs here.