reflections on competitiveness ...

Final house league was today ... I spent a whole lot of time over the past 4 months looking at numbers and putting them into a spread sheet. Talk about proof that statistics exist to be manipulated! Individual dog scores were easy in a raw form but when trying to calculate variations of top dawgs it got complicated. When pulling together team scores, this year, it became impossible. We had a couple of teams that never got to run as the same team. Hardly fair to just write them off. If I used a "system" the littlest change had the team results changing. I decided it wasn't fair and stuck with individual scores.

Lynne and darling Amy - getting ready to run for the love of it!

Even that caused grief of course. Should I only consider the dogs who made every single run? That wasn't fair - some days ran late and people had to go, one day we had terrible weather, and so on. So I figured out a system for standard runs (best 5 runs) and just did raw math for speed scores and points scores. Interestingly enough some of the top dawgs missed runs. Was quite pleased that Brody and Sally were both quite respectable in the group.

In the interests of saving my brain I also didn't include scores from today. Too much to judge three classes, do prizes and try to score. House League was a lot of work last year. A LOT. It was less work this year but still probably an average of 3 hours between each one and then the never stop pace for me of the day itself. Between certificates, tallies and prizes the last day probably took 8 or more hours. That's enough!

I'm sure some people wanted to know exactly how they ranked compared to everybody - so I did lists of top dogs in terms of faults earned, points earned and speed. People poured over the lists. No shock to me!

I have always competed against myself in agility. The concept of a Q fascinated me at first. Then it thrilled me. Actual swag for competing against myself and measuring our skills against a standard and doing what was wanted required. Then a pretty ribbon and a record online? Amazing. It has never been about the placement for me  - mostly because Brody was often the only dog in in his height when we started (and Thea nearly always runs against herself). Had I started with a 22 regular dog I might have been more aware of placements but I wasn't ... and, honestly, I think that's a good thing!

Thea's second AAC Q - lots of fun in this ribbon as Sally and she were the only 2 Qs in the class - and Thea was only 5 seconds slower than Sally!

I run for me. I run for my dogs. We have fun. That's truly what has always mattered to me!

Sally. being Agility, runs to win!