We did AKC Agility on Friday. I’ve been arriving at trials too late, this time I arrived many, many hours earlier than needed. It gave me time to watch quite a few of the Excellent dogs, train my dogs (outside – the trial site was very crowded), go on a long walk with Griffin, and send a boarding puppy home. “B,” a 4 month old Aussie puppy stayed with us for one and a half weeks. His family came to pick him up at the trial so that they would have a chance to see some agility.
Griffin did really well, Jumpers felt out of control but we finished and didn’t really have any real problems in execution but I wasn’t confident in our plan.
Standard again was the challenge – we had a few interesting and “hard” parts on the course. We did the hard parts well but completely failed on a long straight line. One challenge was keeping up with him on a long straight line – and that he wanted to turn back towards me when he got ahead (into an off course tunnel). The other challenge was that his contact behaviors are still a problem in trials. He sometimes stops and sometimes doesn’t. As the day goes on, his contacts get stronger and stronger – but in AKC we only really get one run with those obstacles.
We left the trial to go and get Blaze – he hadn’t left home in 11 days because the boarding puppy got to go everywhere with us. We went to the training center to clean and do trial prep – Saturday we did 3 trials of WCRL rally and over 100 runs (maybe our biggest!).
The trial went fairly smoothly, we met quite a few new teams, and had many special recognitions to others (two ARCHMX, an ARCH, and 4 Level Champions). Griffin was great. I didn’t get much time with him due to judging, helping with the event, and everything else going on. He seems to do very well with that – 9 runs and only lost 21 points (5 for doing a wrong way turn, and 10 for giving the wrong cue during a bonus). Later I counted and we probably finished our ARCHX. Yay Griffin!
I had hoped to participate with the puppies but that just didn’t happen. Viktor now can actually heel with duration and do most of the skills – but he needs more training around people. He easily gets excited and starts howling. Tonks doesn’t know about heeling yt. She can have somewhat decent leash walking – but almost only on the right. Next trial!