2013 CKC Agility stats & Scout Out West

The CKC was a bit quicker posting the 2013 stats now that they have a system worked out. 
I was excited to see that Strider made Top Ten in Canada for the third year in a row.  He placed #9 all breed. He also placed #3 Herding Breed and #2 Sheltie.  Spryte also earned herself a Top Ten placement by achieving #8 Herding Breed.

Spryte and I competed at the Scout Out West agility competition a few weeks back a the Shape Up facility in Edmonton. I have never attended a Scout Out competition before and did not know what to expect. I was pleasantly surprised to find it was a very small group and a very laid back and casual atmosphere.  We were told specifically that mistakes happen and not to stress out about it. Mostly they wanted to see how we recovered from a mistake and our attitude at the end of the day.

We ran four courses, one standard, one steeplechase and two jumpers runs.  The first run was very much like a fun match.  You ran it the best you could and it was judged like any other agility run.The twist for the first two rounds (standard and steeplechase), you could run it again as a training round for $5!  How many times have you walked off a course and thought to yourself, "man I wish I could try that one again!"  Well this was our lucky day!  What a great opportunity to work on contacts (SPRYTE!), handling challenges, weaves etc.  They didn't care what you did with your second run, as long as you finished by "x" amount of time.

So our first round was Standard.  We had a good run but Spryte crashed the double jump. She is having a REALLY hard time with the FCI double. Her jump height is 18", two inches above her normal AAC jump height. This doesn't bother her at all. She hasn't knocked any bars. What she is struggling with is the width of the double jump. The double jump is also 18" wide. This is HUGE!  She consistently misjudges the distance and crashes the far jump.  She hits it so hard she does a summersault and lands on her face. It looks awful and I worry about how it will affect her long term.
So she did her classic crash in our first run. The judge let me redo my run with the same result. It took a few attempts before she cleared it. As soon as she got it I ran off the course to jackpot her with hotdogs. This resulted in a pretty crappy score for my first run.

After that we did much better.  Round two was the Steeplechase course. We would have had a clean run except for a jumped Aframe contact. *sigh* I have a lot of work to do on contacts. I need to enter a trial and fix it in competition. 

Round 3 was a jumpers run. A very TOUGH jumpers run. The spacing was tight and your handling had to be bang on.  We came oh so close to having a clean run. We got through all the tough spots and all the traps, then four obstacles from the end we had to push the dog past the first tunnel mouth to the second one.  I watched countless dogs take the first mouth and had decided to give Spryte an "out" command to push her past.  Well that was my downfall!  She was driving hard to the correct mouth and I over handled her and gave the "out" command. Well in my training "out" usually means to move laterally away from me.  And that is exactly what Spryte did. She moved laterally away and took the off course jump.  How heartbreaking for me, up until that point it was a run that made your heart sing. It was pure magic!  I have included the video and you can see clearly when I say out and Spryte suddenly veers off course.  Good Dog!!! Shame about the handler!

Our last run was another jumpers run and it was perfect! A clean run, perfect handling, the type of run that had me grinning for days after.  We even took a second place in this run, just slightly slower than Justine Davenport and "Preston".  This run is also below too.

So now we wait to find out who will represent Canada at this year's FCI World Championships in Luxembourg. I was really hoping we would all know by now, but I guess it's a tough process. Hopefully they will let us know soon, I'm sitting on the edge of my seat in anticipation.

Jumper round 2, clean run!

Jumper round 1, off course