It’s fun to still have ‘first’ experiences with Griffin!
Last weekend we had our first time of running in the AKC premier class. This is an optional class for dogs who have finished Excellent (level 3) and want to try specific types of challenges. It is somewhat supposed to imitate ‘international’ style courses. What amazed me is that between all height classes there were only about 10 dogs entered even though there were around 70 excellent/master dogs at the show. It doesn’t count towards championship points but can count towards national qualifications. But it seems many dogs enter other types of games when offered (FAST , Time to Beat) – so I’m not sure why more aren’t entered in Premier?
Griffin and I thought it was great – and easier for us than the regular masters. The more turns and less stretches of straight lines, the better! We ended up placing 3rd, but only about a second away from the 2nd place dog (and many from the 1st place dog!).
Later in the day we did our first time in Masters JWW and got our first 10 points towards his championship. I don’t know if we’ll ultimately get far enough to do that as this was the first AKC trial we’ve been to this calendar year and he will need 740 more points!
A few days later we did a USDAA trial and had our first runs in masters. I left my best treats at home and thought I had plenty of time – I forgot we were now in Masters and even though I came to the building during the walk through, I left and went to the store and was very puzzled about how it was almost our turn when we got back. Despite no walk through we had a Q and a very good run. I was confused for about 2 hours until I figured out we were actually in masters level now. The course seemed to so easy! We also got to run in masters gamblers and had a great score – he had one point where he went off course from what I wanted (after the dogwalk) and I should have had him back jump the tire to save time in that section, but we were still 6 points higher than the other dogs in the class! We love strategy games!
It was fun to do so much trialing in July! We won’t get as much this month but this fall has lots of action!