4th and Final Day of Rose City Classic 2010

Today was our last day of the Rose City Classic for 2010. Part of me is sad. After all, why wouldn't I want to trial every day? On second thought, my dog's body deserves a rest and my poor legs do too after being on them on concrete floors the majority of five days. Going into this trial I had set myself (and Vegas) a goal. The goal was to finish her novice AKC agility title so I could add the NA after her name. Going into day 1, she had two JWW legs and one Standard. Based upon our traditional CPE Q rate of 70%, this goal did not seem unreasonable. However, that was not to be.

This morning was Vegas' first Open JWW run. The course is below. We ran small to tall today and that gave me an opportunity to watch the others in the open level. One after one after one I watched them struggle - dogs knocking bars; dogs going in the wrong side of the tunnel; dogs going off course. I had walked the course enough times I felt fairly comfortable with it. I felt it had a nice flow and was not overly complicated - a nice feeling considering some of the courses I walked this week. Vegas pulled out all the stops for me today and it was an absolute wonderful feeling to walk off the course with my girl, so proud of her. Although we did not Q for this run, I'm certain I must have signaled her inadvertently and caused her to knock a bar. Otherwise it was a faultless run and she even took the 12 weaves without having to restart. This was especially important in Open because we are faulted for everything from missed entry, going past the plane of the obstacle, and incompletion. I'm told the reason dogs are knocking bars who normally would not has to do with the rubber matting we're running on and their decreased ability to get traction. I sure hope so as I thought we had broken that bad habit a long time ago. I think it was more about her shifting her body mid-air in response to a queue I gave her such as moving away too soon. Her run time was 36.23 seconds.

Our second and final run of the day was Novice Standard. The judge, Scott Stock, flipped a coin each day at briefing to determine whether the table would be a down or a sit. Fortunate for all of us novice people, today was another sit. For Vegas and I, this is particularly good. She just really doesn't like the down on the table for some reason. I can't figure out if it's all about the size of the table, the (dis)comfort factor, or a confidence thing. I'm going to continue to focus on this in our one-on-one sessions at the practice barn and possibly come up with some tactics I can use at home such as a box representing the table that she must lay down on before getting a meal. Nonetheless, she rocked the course this afternoon and scored a 100, running it in just 51.63 seconds. The SCT (Standard Course Time) was 61 seconds and the course yardage was 127. That means her YPS (Yards Per Second) was 2.46. I was so proud of her! This was her second leg for standard. That means we have just one more novice standard leg to go to complete our novice title. Yippee! Our next AKC trial is in two weeks and is hosted by the Mt. Hood Doberman Pinscher Club at the Clark County Fairgrounds. It'll be nice to run on good, old, familiar, horse-pooped-on dirt again.

(I have to apologize for this map. I tried scanning in three times and each time it got more messed up than the last. I finally gave up.)

One notable mention from this trial...there were SO few tunnels! I could not believe it as each day passed and we had one tunnel or fewer. In looking back over the courses, we had a total of 7 tunnels, one of which was optional for us that I used in our FAST class one day. The chutes were not included in this count but I don't worry about them too much because it doesn't require Vegas to be down so low for a prolonged period. She is still really tired tonight but I mostly think that has to do with four days of trialing plus the overstimulating environment.

Here are a few pictures from the trial:

Here's one more photo from the Rose City Classic, compliments of Nina's Photography: