Yes I still do agility…a lot. Just don’t write about it anymore. In summary, both boys are qualified for AKC Nationals next year, Enzo got his MACH3, Slayte has 7 double Q’s total and probably close to enough points for his first MACH, Muse has started agility class. She’s been homeschooled and joined a class with novice dogs that are doing sequences. I break things down for her a lot. She does everything that I ask her too but she doesn’t really understand why yet. Hopefully that will come. I’m still working on her weaves too.

Since USDAA Nationals is in Nothern CA next year, I want to get both boys qualified for that as well as the 2015 AKC Nationals. It will be a bit of a balancing act.

We did both days of an USDAA trial this past weekend. I wish USDAA would lower the aframe for the Championship division. I run Slayte in Performance 22″ because of the higher aframe in Championship. People keep asking me how tall he measures. He’s only 19.5″ but I don’t want to train the higher Aframe. It would take too many reps to get their running aframes to work on the higher aframe. Enzo might be able to remeasure into the new 18″ division but I’m no going to bother because of the aframe. I know quite a few people that just don’t want to do USDAA anymore because of the aframe. I’ll just sandbag in Performance. 🙂 Only because nationals is close. Otherwise I would just stick with AKC. Anyways that is my USDAA rant.

Other than getting worn out mentally and physically by the conflicts and back to back to back runs, I had fun. Slayte picked up a P1 standard Q and a P1 gamblers Q. Both Enzo and Slayte Q’d in Performance Speed Jumping (the second q for both of them) and got to run in Round 2. Enzo had a fast Round 2 but missed the aframe contact and ran past the last jump and backjumped it. Here is his run.

Slayte was clean and won P22 and got a check for $19. His time was actually a hair faster than the dog that won Championship 22″.

Neither dog Qd in PGP but they were so close! Ergh. Masters Challenge Standard didn’t go very well with either dog. Master Challenge Jumpers looked horrible on paper but ran nicely. Enzo got through the hard parts then missed the weave entry. He also backjumped at the end. In hindsight I should have turned him the other way instead of asking for a lead change. I had g on the brain. Slayte is a bendy gumby dog and Enzo is not. I was happy with how he did. Backsides and running past things are not his strengths. Slayte has been trained to do that kind of stuff but Enzo really hasn’t.

Slayte rocked the course. I went a little too deep on the tunnel and panicked a little but still made it in time to get the front cross to go between the two jumps. It felt really good to get through that course. Also feels good to know that I can do a course like that without blind crosses and all the fancy turns. I spent a lot of time to train myself to keep my eyes on my dogs and always felt like we did the best when I do that. I’m still “old school”. Who knows, I might go there eventually.

Amazingly there were no Championship 22″ qualifiers on this course!