It Sucks or It Soars

SUMMARY: Why some classes I like better than others for some dogs.

Just thought I'd share with you Remington's least favorite class (and a model for my perseverance) and Tika's most favorite class (one that I can really relax at).

Note the Q or n (not Q) history for each.

The single Q for Remington was under time by less than a second. The single non-Q for Tika was a required obstacle that didn't get written down on the scribe sheet, and although I had it on video, the judge said he couldn't use the video as evidence. Oh, well! We got a few more Qs after that anyway.

Remington's Least Favorite Class

					Qual?	Time faults	Course faults	Place	Dog qty
USDAA	Standard	10/9/1999	Placerville	Masters	n		E	12	20
USDAA	Standard	10/10/1999	Placerville	Masters	n		5	7	19
USDAA	Standard	3/18/2000	Madera	Masters	n	10.69		14	16
USDAA	Standard	3/19/2000	Madera	Masters	n	8.02		9	17
USDAA	Standard	4/15/2000	Placerville	Masters	n	4.15		7	25
USDAA	Standard	4/16/2000	Placerville	Masters	n	3.94		7	24
USDAA	Standard	5/6/2000	Hayward	Masters	n		E	17	22
USDAA	Standard	5/7/2000	Hayward	Masters	n	.57	5	8	24
USDAA	Standard	9/2/2000	Hayward	Masters	n	5.94	5	14	28
USDAA	Standard	9/3/2000	Hayward	Masters	n	5.77		12	26
USDAA	Standard	9/30/2000	Ventura	Masters	Q			9	31
USDAA	Standard	10/1/2000	Ventura	Masters	n	7.09		17	28
USDAA	Standard	10/14/2000	Placerville	Masters	n	.09		6	21
USDAA	Standard	10/15/2000	Placerville	Masters	n		E		21
USDAA	Standard	10/21/2000	Madera	Masters	n
USDAA	Standard	10/22/2000	Madera	Masters	n
USDAA	Standard	3/17/2001	Madera	Masters	n	8.38		8	18
USDAA	Standard	3/18/2001	Madera	Masters	n				18
USDAA	Standard	4/21/2001	Placerville	Masters	n		E
USDAA	Standard	4/22/2001	Placerville	Masters	n		E
USDAA	Standard	5/5/2001	Hayward	Masters	n		E
USDAA	Standard	5/6/2001	Hayward	Masters	n		E
USDAA	Standard	5/19/2001	Ventura	Masters	n		E
USDAA	Standard	5/20/2001	Ventura	Masters	n		E
USDAA	Standard	8/18/2001	City of Industry	Masters	n		5
USDAA	Standard	8/19/2001	City of Industry	Masters	n		E
USDAA	Standard	9/1/2001	Hayward	Masters	n		E
USDAA	Standard	9/2/2001	Hayward	Masters	n	.46		4	26
USDAA	Standard	9/3/2001	Hayward	Masters	n		E
USDAA	Standard	10/20/2001	Madera	Masters	n	7.89		20	40
USDAA	Standard	10/21/2001	Madera	Masters	n	5.44
USDAA	Standard	3/16/2002	Madera	Masters	n		E
USDAA	Standard	3/17/2002	Madera	Masters	n
USDAA	Standard	4/20/2002	Placerville	Masters	n
USDAA	Standard	4/21/2002	Placerville	Masters	n	6
USDAA	Standard	8/24/2002	City of Industry	Masters	n		E
USDAA	Standard	8/25/2002	City of Industry	Masters	n		E
USDAA	Standard	10/12/2002	Placerville	Masters	n		E
USDAA	Standard	10/13/2002	Placerville	Masters	n
USDAA	Standard	10/19/2002	Madera	P3	n		E
USDAA	Standard	10/20/2002	Madera	P3	n		E

Tika's Most Favorite Class

					Qual?	Got Pts	Lost Pts	Time faults	Place	Dog qty
CPE	Full House	2/9/2003	Elk Grove	1Lev	Q	45			1	6
CPE	Full House	6/8/2003	Elk Grove	2Lev	n	30			2
CPE	Full House	8/10/2003	Elk Grove	2Lev	Q	39			1	2
CPE	Full House	11/8/2003	Livermore	2Lev	Q	42			1	2
CPE	Full House	1/11/2004	Elk Grove	3Lev	Q	41	-3	3	1	3
CPE	Full House	3/27/2004	Sunnyvale	3Lev	Q	42			1	6
CPE	Full House	5/8/2004	Elk Grove	4Lev	Q	49			1	3
CPE	Full House	6/6/2004	Turlock	4Lev	Q	46			1	1
CPE	Full House	6/11/2004	Elk Grove	5Lev	Q	37	-1		3	6
CPE	Full House	10/23/2004	Turlock	5Lev	Q	41	-1		1	4
CPE	Full House	3/12/2005	Turlock	5Lev	Q	49	-2		3	3
CPE	Full House	3/27/2005	Sunnyvale	5Lev	Q	41	-2		2	4
CPE	Full House	5/7/2005	Elk Grove	CLev	Q	35			1	2
CPE	Full House	5/8/2005	Elk Grove	CLev	Q	44			1	1
CPE	Full House	5/21/2005	Elk Grove	CLev	Q	34			1	2
CPE	Full House	7/3/2005	Elk Grove	CLev	Q	48			1	2
CPE	Full House	7/4/2005	Elk Grove	CLev	Q	50			1	1
CPE	Full House	7/23/2005	Sunnyvale	CLev	Q	42			1	4
CPE	Full House	3/11/2006	Turlock	CLev	Q	46			1	1
CPE	Full House	3/25/2006	Sunnyvale	CLev	Q	46			1	2
CPE	Full House	6/2/2006	Elk Grove	CLev	Q	38			5	9
CPE	Full House	6/17/2006	Madera	CLev	Q	35	-1	1	1	3
CPE	Full House	8/5/2006	Elk Grove	CLev	Q	41	-1		1	1
CPE	Full House	2/24/2007	Elk Grove	CLev	Q	49			1	3
CPE	Full House	3/10/2007	Turlock	CLev	Q	50			1	3
CPE	Full House	3/24/2007	Sunnyvale	CLev	Q	41			1	1
CPE	Full House	7/21/2007	Petaluma	CLev	Q	49	-1	1	1	1
CPE	Full House	11/23/2007	Elk Grove	CLev	Q	50			1	2
CPE	Full House	11/24/2007	Elk Grove	CLev	Q	53			1	3
CPE	Full House	3/8/2008	Turlock	CLev	Q	35			1	1
CPE	Full House	3/22/2008	Twin Creeks	CLev	Q	46			2	3
CPE	Full House	3/23/2008	Twin Creeks	CLev	Q	46			1	4

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Perfect Weekends History and Full House

SUMMARY: Hmm, I *have* had perfect weekends before. But not this perfect, and no awards for them.

I double-checked my records, and Remington in fact got 8 out of 8 in a CPE trial two months before he was first visibly sick from cancer. But, back then, they were giving High In Trial awards, not Perfect Weekend awards, he was only 2nd high in trial, so I felt more like a loser than a winner. (And only 3 of those 8 were firsts.)

Then Tika got 6 out of 6 at a CPE trial in February '03 at her second-ever trial of any kind...all at Level 1, which has no weave poles or teeters and are pretty basic courses. Two of the runs had 5 faults. And only 5 of the 6 were firsts. :-) But, true to Tika form, even then she had the most points in Full House of all 126 dogs entered, and the fastest time of all 75 dogs who ran the same Jumpers course.

I *like* doing Full House with my fast dogs! It's essentially a Gambler's point-accumulation period with no gamble. In other words, there are no faults, and you can make your own course from start to finish. So fast dogs who can do contacts and weaves can have an absolute ball.

In the 29 Full Houses that Tika has entered (and that I bothered making notes about), she's been first of all dogs entered at least 3 times, 2nd 8 times, 3rd 4 times, 4th 2 times. If you take out the small dogs--who get 5 seconds more, which could be at least another 2 tunnels (6 points) or the equivalent for us--that moves her up to 1st at least 12 times, 2nd at least another half a dozen times. You can see why I like it. :-)

And you can also see why some 3-dog DAM teams in USDAA like to have a small dog on their team: In USDAA, small dogs also get more time than big dogs in the point-accumulation games, so a team with fast small dogs could, in theory, beat a team with all big dogs just during those few extra seconds.

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CPE Day One

SUMMARY: As usual, plunging from top to bottom and back up again.

Since it's a local trial, I'm here at my computer this evening. Icing my knee. It's not feeling good. Not swollen that I can tell, but stiff and getting painful. Sigh.

I crapped out entirely with both dogs in Snooker, usually one of our CPE strong points. Stupid handler tricks both times.

Boost can't do weaves. They are broken. Competely. I mean, as if she'd barely ever seen weaves before in her life. Broken broken broken.

Tika had a lovely Jumpers run going until my front cross was in the wrong place and she crashed into me and she yiped and I fell and then we both told each other how exciting the whole thing was and got up and finished the run. Of course we kept all our bars up and had no offcourses or runouts, but because I was fondling my dog while sitting on the ground, that's an NQ.

Boost's Jumpers was just a mishmash of runnning past jumps, turning back to me, blah blah. After last weekend and today I feel like I shouldn't be trialing her at all. (Heaves deep sigh.) Her standard round was absolutely beautiful except that we couldn't complete the weaves.

On the up side at various times during the day, both dogs completed their Gambles on courses where very few dogs Qed. Tika had the second highest points of any dogs in all levels 3/4/5/C (about 80 dogs I think))--and she'd have gotten that extra darned point to tie the highest if she hadn't stopped before a back-to-back tunnel to snarf at my feet about how exciting things were. Boost was 2nd of 10 dogs in her group but because we weren't doing weaves, we missed out on 20 points that Tika got during her run. And her gamble wasn't perfect--came inside one jump that I had to spin her around to make a 2nd approach on, but at least she did a lovely Out the 2nd time.

And then there's Full House. OK, it's sort of a silly game for many people--I think of it as an automatic Q because it's basically design-your-own-course and just meet the minimum obstacle requirements. But after working score table today, I realize that the Level 1 dogs at least have a VERY difficult time getting a Q in Full House. (Reinforces my feeling that Level 1 is for pre-Novice dogs and/or handlers.) I had a lovely flowing course that I thought both my dogs could run nicely and rack up the points.

Two small, fast dogs with 5 seconds more than us for point accumulation earned 44 points. My course I hoped would get us at least 44 points. I keep hoping for a class where both dogs run well and I can compare and see who's really faster.

Boost was right in tune with me. Required a lot of running and maybe I could've gotten a couple of ighter turns if I could've gotten there, but really she was fast and lovely and the whistle blew while we were in our last tunnel, so we ended with 41 points (the 3-point tunnel didn't score), which aside from those 2 small-fast dogs, was the highest of any of the dogs competing at any height, any level. So I got Tika good and revved up, so much so that she didn't stick her Aframe either time so carried out a bit further than I'd have liked for a really tight course, but mostly did a very nice job and--the whistle blew whie we were in our last tunnel, so we also ended with 41 points, and their times were within a tenth of a second of each other. So I still don't know who's really going to be the faster dog.

Some wise voices joshed with me about "what is it that the dogs have in common that their times are so close on the same course?" I of course pointed out that they're both blue merles, so that must be it. Of course the limiting factor might indeed be the handler, but the places where they weren't as tight were different for the 2 dogs, so it's not just entirely how fast I can move around the course (and this did require a lot of running).

Anyway, THAT was fun. But I wish I hadn't broken boost's weaves so entirely. Tomorrow I think I'll go ahead and try them but just keep going if she blows out because I think I've been pulling her away from them so often as she makes more and more mistakes that I'm patterning her to make mistakes, as Nancy suggested in class this week. (Heaves similar deep sigh.)

OK, I haven't quite made 20 minutes on the knee icing yet. Then shower and bed.

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