News and updates of my Border Collies and our canine performance events.

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September 9, 2008

September 5-7, 2008 - New USDAA Titles!

September brought us another 3-day 3-ring USDAA Agility Trial at the Blackthorne in East Durham, NY, hosted by Y Agility. Despite some heat & humidity, rain & wind, we managed to have a rather successful weekend.

Token did some nice work in his Masters classes, though not without the usual glitches & bobbles. He did qualify in Friday's Master Gamblers with a 3rd place. And in Sunday's Masters Standard class, he qualified with a 2nd place in a large competive 26" class. The 186 yard course had a standard course time of 58 seconds, and Token ran it cleanly in 41.39 seconds. This was his 5th Q in Masters Standard, finishing his SAM (Standard Agility Master) title.
Dandy had a very busy weekend in the Advanced classes, and did an amazing job. He was in 4 classes on Friday, 5 on Saturday & 3 on Sunday. That's asking alot of a young dog who just turned 22 months old today! But he rose to the occassion. We didn't qualify in Advanced Gamblers or Jumpers due to one or two errors in each. But he qualified in both Advanced Snooker classes, earning a 1st place & a 2nd place, and finished his AS (Advanced Snooker) title. We ran Advanced Pairs with a fellow flyball enthusiast, a Dutch Shepherd named Brink, and we qualified with a 2nd place (missed 1st place by 0.03 seconds ). I entered Dandy in his first ever Grand Prix, just to see how he'd do on a more difficult course, and while he did not qualify, he only had 10 faults (missed weave entry, and one bar down). Other than those 2 errors, he ran beautifully, and I was very pleased with his run!
Dandy's big news of the weekend is that he qualified all 3 days in Advanced Standard, all First Places, to finish his AAD (Advanced Agility Dog) title!
So Dandy will now be running in Masters along with his dad Token! I have no great expectations and will not be putting pressure on him to qualify, we are just ready to take our training to the next level and continue our journey. The building of skills is just beginning with Dandy, and it is a work in progress with Token; between training the dogs and improving MY handling skills, we always have things to work on...but that's what keeps it interesting! :-)



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