Mid-Atlantic Agility Showcase
Riot was a rock-star at his first USDAA agility trial. He had 13 runs over the weekend and really did well. I was a bit worried about him having so many runs, but it didn’t phase him. Me? I was pretty exhausted. I can’t remember all the details of the weekend (and that would make for a very long blog post), but here are some of the highlights from the weekend.
FRIDAY
Jumpers - His jumpers run was one of the nicer ones of the morning. Most of the dogs were a little wild Friday morning and lots of bars were coming down. Riot kept all of his 26” jumps up and other than a wrong course (he was driving forward hard and I couldn’t pull him off before he took the off course jump), he had a very nice run.
Gamblers. We had a really nice opening sequence. I had held his a-frame contact for a good second or two before I released him (right now nailing the contacts are more important than course speed for him). So we were further away from the gamble than I would have liked to have been when the buzzer went off. The gamble was a jump to a curved tunnel to two more jumps. Anyways, I sent him over the jump and through the tunnel and he took off. I was too far behind him when he came shooting out of the tunnel, he missed jump 3 and had taken jump 4 before I had a chance to open my mouth. I can’t complain, he was fast and drive-y, and I was just not where I needed to be when he came out of that tunnel.
Snooker - I didn’t look at the course map (couldn’t find copies of the starters or advanced maps all weekend) and didn’t have a very good plan going in. I set him up with a really bad angle to a jump and he took at at a near impossible slice resulting in his only dropped bar all weekend.
Standard - We had a few issues getting our weave entrance and had to go back twice to get it. Even with having to pull him back for the weaves twice and holding his contacts (well the two he stopped on) for an extra second, he was 10 seconds under course time. We did something wrong and didn’t Q, but I don’t remember what it was at this point.
SATURDAY
Team Gamblers - Riot’s first DAM team run was his first run outside on grass. The ring was defined by a single piece of rope on stakes, so no very defined for young dogs like Riot. As luck would have it, right as he was taking a line of jumps next to the ring gate, someone was walking by with their dog not 3 feet from the rope gating. Riot hopped the rope to go over to visit. I did manage to get him back into the ring and even managed to get part of the gamble and cross the final jump before the buzzer sounded. We didn’t get as many point as we could have, but we didn’t E either. I had so many people come up to me and say how impressed they were that he came back to me and continued working.
Team Standard - The team standard course was nice and challenging. Riot did managed to take an off course jump between obstacles 1 and 2 so unfortunately we got a dreaded E. And then on top of that, right as he was headed over jump 3, the leash runner threw his leash down right in front of where he was landing so he had to go investigate. I did manage to call him back and get him over jump 4, but he almost grabbed his leash as he was coming back to me. After that, we had a very nice remainder of the run. He even nailed his weave pole entrance (which was not all that easy) and gave me a bark as he was doing so. That’s the first time he’s given me a bark on course. So many people came up and commented to me about the “leash incident” and how good Riot was and how rotten my luck had been on the team events so far between the leash and the dog right outside the ring. Frankly they are both training issues and baby dog stuff that we need to work through and probably won’t happen in the future as he gets more experience (and hopefully more focus).
Standard - We ran a beautiful standard course on Saturday. He nailed his weave entrance the first time and other than me saying go and assuming he’d take the last jump, he missed it and I had to pull him back around to take it. We Q’d and got third place.
Team Jumpers - Another challenging course. We did had two refusals (but no E!) and he again nailed his weave pole entry.
Pairs - We paired with Jimmy. Riot ran the first half of the course and Jimmy ran the second. I was a little worried how the pairs run was going to go since Riot is always wanting to visit other dogs and there was going to be another dog on course. Riot ran a very nice first half of the course and I immediately put him in a down and ran the baton over to Judy so she could run with Jimmy. Riot immediately went down and stayed down while Jimmy ran his half of the course. We Q’d and landed in 3rd place (Jimmy missed his dog walk contact).
SUNDAY
Team Snooker - I came up with a simple, yet flow-y plan for Riot. Since it was a team event, my main goal was to get out of there with a decent number of points and make it through. There were 6 weave poles that were worth 4 points. So my plan was red, jump worth 3 points, red, weaves, red, weaves, and then tackle the closing sequence. (We had to attempt 3 or 4 reds.) Riot ran perfectly. He nailed his weave poles all 3 times we did them on course (one time with a bark) and we made it all the way through the closing sequence before the buzzer sounded.
Standard - Riot ran the course beautifully. I held his a-frame and dog walk contacts extra long, but released him almost immediately from his teeter. His time was just about 20 seconds under course time. He Q’d and got first place.
Pairs - Initially I wasn’t planning on entering him in pairs today, but someone I knew needed a partner, so I decided to. Our team didn’t qualify. Riot ran very nicely, but I did have to bring him back to fix his weaves (first time from Sat/Sun that he didn’t nail them). His partner was a little wild on the course. Since they were one dog short of having enough for even pairs, they needed an accommodating dog, so I volunteered Riot. He got to run the other half of the course with another partner and did very well (only missing his weave entrance the first time again). We did help Rosie pick up a Q, so that was good. Again, he had no issues being on course with another dog running and listened very well to me.
Our last run of the weekend should have been Team Relay (which Riot’s team did qualify to run in — only a certain percentage of the teams get to run). We were well below the cut-off for Qs (I think we were ranked 33 out of 51 teams prior to the relay). Since Riot’s team-mates didn’t care if we ran or not, I decided I was done running for the weekend so we didn’t run (instead I scribed the class).
Over all, not a bad debut for the little guy. If I had known that there was a chance we wouldn’t have run in Team Relay, I may have entered Riot in another starters class on Sunday. As it was it was a lot of runs for Riot, but Riot didn’t seem to mind. He was still amped up when we got home.
After the trial, I let Riot out to play frisbee with 4 border collies. He was keeping up with them just fine. And was thoroughly enjoying himself.
