LCDA Charleston Trial Recap

February 27-28th was Harley's trial down in Charleston, SC. Harley did very well the first day, earning qualifying scores in several events, most importantly the tournament events.

The Cynosport World Games are coming up this October in Louisville, KY, and this trial was an important step along the way. To qualify to enter a Cynosport tournament event, one must earn 2 qualifying scores in that event (except for Dog Agility Masters Team/Performace Versatility Pairs, which only requires 1 qualifying score). Coming into Charleston, we had 1 Q in Performance Grand Prix and 1 Q in Performance Speed Jumping. We needed a Q in each to guarantee our trip to Louisville. Read on to see if we made it...

Saturday

PIII Snooker - Harley usually does very well in Snooker. It's been her handlers that alway bungle it up! Not so with this run. Harley scored an impressive 52 points (If you know snooker rules, it was 4 reds and the points were 1+7+1+7+1+3+1+4+2+3+4+5+6+7 = 52). Best part was that she placed 1st and got her first SuperQ! 3 SuperQ's are needed to earn a PIII title in snooker, and we were dry up to this point, not for lack of trying. The thing about SuperQ's is that you have to be aggressive in your plan. It's not enough just to qualify. A SuperQ is earned when you place in the top 15% of a height class of at least 7 dogs (there are other rules about less than 7). You have to start running for the most points you can get instead of trying to be conservative and get the minimum 37 points required for a qualifying score. We've struggled recently with this, and going all out has cost us. Snooker is very unforgiving!


PIII Gamblers - Harley always does very well in her Gamblers opening. She racks up a lot of points very quickly. However, the closing came to bite us again. We placed 3rd overall, but no Q. We're still working on her distance work, and there's a lot more work to be done.


PIII Standard - As is always the case with our standard runs, something went wrong. Harley uncharacteristically dropped a bar, then proceed to look at her dad while not doing the weave polls (which was more dad's fault for not hiding well enough while video taping!). We ended with a respectable 3rd.

Performance Grand Prix  - With all Harley's troubles in standard, she sure doesn't show it in this tournament event (which has all the standard obstacles minus the pause table). She flew through this course to a first place and a Q! This was doubly important - A) This now qualifies us to enter PGP at Cynosport later this year, and B) a 1st place finish earns us a first round bye at regionals this June!

Performance Speed Jumping - Harley turned in another impressive performance, earning a 3rd place and a Q! This completes our goal for qualifying in each tournament event for Cynosport!


Sunday
In brief, Sunday was not as good as our Saturday showing. Harley was a little tired, and her runs showed it. She was making mistakes, and ended up not earning a Q in any of the events. She did, however, earn LOTS of 3rd places! Four, to be exact.

That's it for this trial. Our next trial isn't until April when we enter our first AKC trial! This will be the first month that mixed breeds are allowed at competition, and we are looking forward to showing our stuff!

Summarized Results:
Saturday

 - Performance Grand Prix - 1st and Q
 - PIII Snooker - 1st and Q

 - Perfomance Speed Jumping Round 1 - 3rd and Q

 - PIII Standard - 3rd
 - PIII Gamblers - 3rd

Sunday
 - PIII Standard - 3rd

 - PIII Jumpers - 3rd

 - PIII Gamblers - 3rd

 - Perfomance Speed Jumping Round 2 - Eliminated

 - PIII Snooker - 3rd

Slo-Mo's Ancestry

This was already on our facebook page, but we forgot to cross post it here for posterity. For Kristen's birthday, she received a DNA ancestry test for our puppy Mo. We know Mo's a mixed breed, but we were never quite sure what mix. Obviously a border collie mix, but what are the other parts???

Because Mo is a mixed breed, this ancestry is measured in levels. Mixed breeds rarely have anything listed in  level 1 (75%). They would have to have a purebred parent. Each subsequent level designates a smaller percentage.

Mo's highest level is 3 (20-36%): Collie (doesn't specify which type of collie but we all know)
level 4 (10-19%) breeds are: German Shepherd, Italian Greyhound, Siberian Husky
level 4 (less than 10%) breeds are: American Eskimo, English Setter

So what we learned from all this is that Mo is a Mutt with a capital M, and we're ok with that. Yes, we were hoping for something more conclusive, but at least it's conclusive that he is a mutt.

The best that we can do when people ask us what he is, is border collie mix.