USDAA Spring Festival, 22" Triathlon Winner

The two courses in this video are Team Standard (Round 1) and the Triathlon Finals (Round 3).

Round 1:
There were two options most commonly chosen as leadouts for this course. Handlers tended to either do a very short lead out and pull in over #2 to then rear the double at #3 or they did a front cross after the #2 jump to handle the 180 with dog on left. The #2 jump came down quite frequently, as the suction of the off course weaves coming out of the chute drew dogs whose handlers had chosen a more stationary front cross position. I chose to do a moving front cross, with a very short lead out, as I wanted Josie to read my motion as I cued the turn to, and over, #2.

The 180 after the dogwalk proved a challenge for some handlers who pulled too quickly to take off and 'beat their dog out of the tunnel' at the other end. The handling option met with the most success happens to be the one that I chose, shown in the video, and that was supporting the jumps (#6 and #7) with dog on left, and meeting your dog at the exit of the tunnel, thus rearing jump #9 and pulling to the #11 weaves.

A number of dogs received refusals at jump #12 as handlers peeled off to get to the teeter. Jump #12 was a pretty flat angled approach and if not adequately supported, was just begging for a closed fist to go up.

The most off courses in this round were found somewhere in the 180 (#14 and #15) after the teeter, on the way to the Aframe. Many, many dogs came in between the two jumps and in an effort to get back around the jumps, ended up back jumping one of the jumps. If the handler managed to safely get the dog back on the other side and take #15 correctly, they were so far out of position that most wound up getting an off course as their dog then took the tunnel instead of the Aframe.

The natural line of the ending on this course, felt like you should rear the tire. The crowd in Texas was already a bit leery of this particular tire due to a serious tire injury the previous day. Rearing of the tire was most often not the chosen handling method, and folks either front-crossed after the Aframe if their dog had a stopped contact, or merely took dog on left and hoped their "go on!" worked.

I was very pleased with how this run played out for us. We lost some time as Josie kind of peeled out coming out of the chute and trying to regain traction on the super-slick clay footing of the arena, but the rest of the run felt very together, very efficient, and it certainly felt *amazing*!!

Round 3:
This course was deceptively QUICK. Walking it, it seemed like the angles and approaches might really impede the speed, but with winning times in the 23 and 24 second ranges, I was definitely proven wrong.

Jumps #1,2,3 were set at angles such that slicing the jumps was the dog's only option. #2 came down for a fairly large percentage of the dogs. I chose to lead out (which you can't see) to about #2, then do another moving front cross to cue Josie to shape the turn over #3 and be able to power out and really get some speed going to the tunnel and the #6 jump to follow. The #6 jump took out far more teams than I would have anticipated. Likely due to the impending threadle-type sequence, and even just the harsh angle to #7, handlers were peeling off to handle the rest of the line, and the dogs were overly responsive and came right with them.

If you made it to #7 without faulting, you were typically pretty good until the Aframe and subsequent ending-line jumps. The turn over #13 was critical, as it set up your dog's approach to the Aframe. If dogs swung wide, the handler had to correct their line, and a few ended up in the tunnel as a result. In an effort to get a tight turn, the bar at #13 came down several times as well, knocking out otherwise top contenders. I chose to do a post-turn over #13, knowing that I could trust with complete verbal obstacle recognition, the discrimination was not an issue I needed to over-handle. I was more concerned about getting to the bottom of the Aframe by the time she did, so I could push over #15 and get a tight turn to the finish jump.

The most popular option chosen was to front cross after #13, which led to pulling over #15 and a rear cross to #16. the front to the rear seemed to eat up time that mostly proved impossible to overcome. When you're talking a course of this yardage with dogs running in the low 20's, every fraction of a second is crucial.


These courses were fast, they were fun, and they had some obvious challenges as well as some challenges that were less obvious, that only became apparent once the class was underway.

Thanks, USDAA, for a very fun event!

Category:

Pets & Animals

Tags:

• USDAA
• dog
• agility