Rose City Classic 2012 - Friday

Friday was my "short" day. I had to get the kids to their dad's that evening which meant getting out at a decent time. Fortunately the big dogs were running earlier in the day than the day before so we had a pretty good chance. And there was to be only one Dane show, too.

You might notice a theme to the pictures I took Friday.... (all but one anyway)

This is a friend's lovely bitch, Boca.

So like usual, Standard was up then JWW. One ring started with Excellent Fast followed by Standard; we were running 20s then 24/26 inch dogs.

Standard
This course seemed fairly straight forward. The challenges presented were avoiding the off course #14 tunnel coming out of the chute, avoiding the wrong end of the tunnel after #13, and avoiding an off course #19 after the #17 jump if the dog got ahead of you. My plan for handling was as follows:

• Work from the inside from 1 - 5. 
• I walked a rear cross as well as a front cross at the a-frame. I chose to stay on the inside. 
• Rear cross the chute
• Work the inside from the table through 11
• Push in and shape the angle over 12 to 13 to better point her toward the far end of the tunnel
• Move out in front of 15 and work from the right side for 15, 16, and 17
• Planned to throw an off side arm up at 17 to avoid/discourage taking the panel versus the tunnel

Since we've had some panel issues as of late, I also wanted to be sure I was out in front of the tunnel exit and in her line of sight to turn her toward the panel and make sure she got her stride right to clear it. I even added an extra "big" command to make sure she knew to jump high and clear it.

SCT: 66

Yards: 176

Our time was 49.55. We finished 19th out of 21 qualifiers. It was a fast, fast class of dogs. Nice course for it. We earned 16 MACH points on that run; whoohoo! Very proud of my girly, but now the pressure was on. If we qualified in JWW that would be our 19th QQ. Of course I wanted it, but I didn't actually put any pressure. We have points to go for MACH so it would just be a step in the right direction. Of course I wanted it though....

JWW

One tunnel, so yay for that! It was a long one, though. I walked the course a couple ways. In the end, I decided to start by handling from the left. I figured to run with her and rear cross at 4 and toss in a blind cross after 6. At the end of the weaves I was going to front cross and make sure I pushed well into the tunnel versus sending and moving out. The dilemma at that point was how far to beat feet. Sometimes if I'm too far ahead of Vegas she tries so hard to catch up with me that bars can come down. In this instance, I decided to risk it and moved out beyond 12. From there it was just a matter of taking the pinwheel and a run for home. 

SCT: 42
Yards: 149
Our time was 35.87 with a YPS of 4.15. We placed 18 out of 20 qualifiers. And that was our 19th double-Q. What a high, what a day. Very proud of Vegas. She ran well, concentrated, focused, and was totally in tune with me. She's such a crowd pleaser; it's such a joy to listen to people when she's running and to talk with them before and after. A huge part of her time at Rose City is spent doing breed PR and she did a bang-up job of it - loving on kids of all ages, adults, seniors, and participating in umpteen requests for photos.