Monday, May 18, 2009

back at it .. what fun!

Spent yesterday @ Absolute Agility at a CPE trial.
Really have to say I do not get why so few people attend our CPE trials
What a great venue to start a young dog, play with an old dog or just enjoy a great day with your dogs.
I like AAC games just fine (snookers and gamblers) but CPE has such variety - jackpot (the rules can change from game to game), Fullhouse, Wildcard, Colours, Snookers too - and jumpers and standard of course.
I like the variety a whole lot!

Apparently the dogs do too - Sally earned 2 Qs ... one jackpot and one wildcard - GO SALLY GO - jackpot was truly a lovely run - listening, working hard and so much fun ... it's amazing to run a dog you can send from half a ring away to an obstacle!
She did a brave teeter in another class... happy, confident and nice to see.
She did get a little sniffy and loopy in the middle of the day but all in I coudn't have been much more pleased with her than I am.
My only goal with Thea was to have fun - we did have fun and we blasted through many courses too - she worried a little about jackpot and snookers but SMOKED the jumpers run and earned a nice tidy Q in wildcard too!
Brody was amazing - he earned 4/5 Qs only missing the last one because I didn't want to demotivate him with a hard call off once the whistle went for the last jackpot ... we just enjoyed the course ending on our own terms. He earned 27 points in Fullhouse (the only one of my dogs to do that game). We've only done Fullhouse twice before - once with 27 points and once with 21. Fullhouse is weird - you have to do three singles (jumps), 2 three point obstacles (6 weaves, the double, the spread and tunnels) and 1 5 point obstacle (aframe, dogwalk, teeter) not all obstacles are out on the course and you have to do more than that to get to your point total generally.
Wildcard is a cool game where at three places on the course you have to pick what obstacle you want to do (like maybe a tunnel or an aframe; or weaves or 2 jumps). Thea ran the course in 27 seconds with 47 allowed for her height and Sally ran in 45 with 43 allowed for her height. It was a good warm up for both of them.
Then we had jumpers - it was a lovely figure 8 course - fast and long ...
Thea ran in 35 seconds (with 61 allowed); Sally in 50 seconds with 56 allowed; Brody took 30 seconds with 56 seconds allowed.
The two jackpot rounds were fun - they give you time in the opening (40 seconds) to rack up as many points as you can then some weird thing to do in the closing (though sometimes you can do the "gamble" part at any time apparently - I've never seen it). Yesterday for one class you had to do a 1,3, and 5 point obstacle after the whistle and boot it for the table; in the other class you had to get through 3 of 4 tunnels. You only have 17 seconds from the time the whistle blows til you have to hit the table and stop the clock. It's a bit tricky to figure out. The tunnel jackpot was the last course - and all my guys had fun on it. Sally was amazing scoring 42 points in 55 seconds to Brody's 28 in 51 seconds and Thea's 45 in 72 seconds (I'm not sure how she got so many points and was so overtime - but we had fun!)
The snookers course was BRUTAL ... the reds were in tough spots and there weren't a lot of ways to get big points though Brody got 34 points somehow (I'd be hard pressed to explain how). Thea got 19 points - not quite enough for a q though she was very brave. Sally got me membership in a very exclusive club - the zero point club as it's known. She blasted past the red jump she was set up to take and hit a tunnel at a hundred miles an hour. I was glad snookers was in the middle of the day. It would have been a sad note to end on :)

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