This post is part of a series about our 2016 USDAA TitleMania experience. Click here for our agility overview. Click here for the Rally World Championships. Click here for 14 year old Blaze at the dog beach.
As usual, things have been busy. Two days of AKC agility! A great CPE trial! Visiting CPE nationals! A gun dog seminar in KY! And we just got back from the Titlemania event!
Why We Went
Early in the year this event was announced – a 4 day agility event with some special awards and a 3 day “World Rally Championship.” I decided fairly early on that I should go for rally: (1) Griffin tends to do fairly well (2) It’s not too far away, only about 3 hours (3) And as a judge/trial host, I should support the event. And at the last minute I sent in entries for agility too. Our agility instructor said to enter only a few runs because I was worried about how he would do in a big multi-ring environment.
What We Entered
She gave us great advice…but I ended up entering all 12 of the agility tournament runs, 2 of master challenge, and the 6 rally runs – if we were taking the time to go, we may as well enter many things! And even if we decided to not run, the gas/time was the biggest expense and I would rather be sad about skipping a few runs than wishing we had entered. As we got closer I considered pulling from agility after seeing videos of what the ring walls were likely to be (curtains used at USDAA nationals), but we were past the closing date.
This was a 4 day event with Standard, Jumpers, Snooker, and Gamblers classes being offered 3 times each as well as the Masters Challengers classes offered each day. There were some special awards overall with some points system for qualifying scores and maybe some other parts to the system – it was outlined in the rules and I’ll admit I didn’t read that in detail. Rally was six runs – different combinations of levels depending on what a team registered for.
The Facility
Titlemania was set up to feel big. The event was held at the SPIRE athletic facility in Waverly, Ohio. It’s a very weird place – the outside is a standard concrete sort of building but the inside was very impressive. We were in a building with a giant athletic turf surrounded by a running track. The room was big enough for 3 agility rings, vending, 3 rally rings, misc awards/scoring tables/waiting around the rings and plenty of extra space.
Crating was in a room off of that area. While we had been told we would have air conditioning and wi-fi that wasn’t quite the truth. The crate room etc was air conditioned but the big room was not. It did get warm but I wasn’t too bothered by it given how great the facility was in other ways. The dogs and people seemed to run well on the turf, I saw very little slipping – mostly during one spot on a hard turn in a masters challengers class. The rally was done on the track surface which may have been less comfortable for short haired dogs.
Standard – Performance I Dog of the Year, photo by USDAA
The judges were great! The excitement was great! More to come on our 4 day adventure. But, as the results are already online – our weekend was pretty great. Not perfect – we came home excited for more training and to attend future Titlemania events.