This weekend Katy and I are competing in a semi-local agility trial (it’s held at a facility about 90 minutes away). We compete in ASCA and really enjoy it. When we first started competing, Katy and I had already been training for a few years. She has some dog reactivity issues that held me back from the challenging setting of a trial. But, in 2007, I found a nice venue with three entrances(!) and well-run trials.
Today we had six runs and no Q’s. Since we moved up into Elite Jumpers and Gamblers, we’ve learned what all of our weaknesses are as a team. One of our issues is speed. ASCA courses are nicely designed and usually have really nice flow. So they are fairly easy to handle. But the qualifying course times are really fast and we can have a clean run and still not make course time. It means that we always have lots of things to work on in our training.
The lack of Q’s today aren’t quite as bad as they sound. Katy did all of her weave poles really fast and we earned all of our qualifying points for our gambles. We have six more runs tomorrow and usually our second day goes better than our first!
The dog pictured below is Rylie. She’s a seasoned agility dog and belongs to a local judge who also helps coordinate all of the activities at the trials. I took this at an ASCA trial back in August of 2007.
