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Friday, July 9, 2010

Trial Recap: Carolina Piedmont Agility AKC Trial in Charlotte, NC

This past weekend was our first hometown trial in a loooong time. Carolina Piedmont Agility (CPA) hosted their AKC trial on July 4th weekend at the Charlotte Sports Center. We are more than happy to enter trials in July that are hosted indoors in A/C, especially if it is close to home! We've come to enjoy the trials that CPA hosts, as they are always well run and know what competitors expect out of a great trial site.

Many people came into the trial with reservations about the running surface. Indoor turf has not earned itself a great reputation in the agility community, especially in this area. I mainly attribute this to the turf surface at another local trial site that has drawn the ire of large dog owners due to the turf's lack of grip, resulting in dogs slipping. I, however, had no reservations about the Charlotte Sports Center turf - I play on it regularly in a soccer league! It's cleat-friendly and is infused with small tiny rubber pellets that A) give dogs a nice grip since their claws can really dig in for traction, and B) it has a nice "spring" to it so you don't feel like you're running on carpet over concrete.

Needless to say, we were excited about a local, indoor trial at a great facility. But that was only a small part of why we were excited: This would be the first trial for our youngest dog, Mo! Mo started training in late November at Dog Haven under Deb Knowles. We decided that we would try to enter him in this trial, as he turned 15 months old on July 1st (AKC regulations state that a dog must be older than 15 months to compete).

We also decided that we would only enter him in 2 classes, 1 each day. It's always an adventure when your dog goes to its first trial. You never know how they are going to react when they get into the ring for the first time. There are so many other things going on, it makes it very different from the controlled environment we have at our weekly classes. While Mo has been coming to trials with Harley for over a year now, we wanted to ease him into competition. Part of this was also entering him in "Preferred."  AKC Preferred classes allow a dog to run in a jump height below what they measure. Mo measures 21" at the withers, which would put him in the 20" height class. We're working him up to to 20 inches, but in the mean time we decided that running 16" Preferred would be best, and we can build up from there.

Without further ado, here are the results!

Saturday 7/3
Open JWW - Harley - Harley opened her weekend with a BEAUTIFUL run. She was fast, accurate, and clean, earning a 1st place & Q. [video]


Novice FAST - Harley - Oops. We forgot to move Harley up into Open after titling in the last trial...Oh well. We ran this just for fun and, it turns out, infamy. Our run was going very well, racking up 78 out of a possible 80 points. All that was left was the last jump which stops the timer. James was paying too much attention to directing Harley and not enough attention to where he was on the course that he put himself on a collision course with the final jump. Luckily it doesn't effect our run, as that jump is only used to stop the timer and has no bearing on whether or not you Q. Plus, Harley jumped the jump simultaneously to me knocking it down, so the time difference would've been negligible. We ended up in 2nd place (1st place tied with points, but had a faster time) and a Q. Be sure to check out the video!


Novice Standard - Harley - Same as above, we forgot to move her into Open. Regardless, Harley steamed through the course, earning a 1st  & Q!


Novice Standard - Mo - The big debut! Mo did extremely well for his first run at trial. He was un-phased by the change in environment and ran exactly how he would've in practice. He had beautiful downs on the contacts, and ran clean with no bars down. To our surprise, Mo ended up in 2nd place & Q, only 0.40 seconds behind 1st place! [video]



Sunday
Open Standard - Harley - AKC allows dogs to move up, so on Sunday we moved Harley up from Novice to where she was supposed to be: Open. Kristen had a nice clean run with Harley. Harley was a little slow on the table getting to a sit, but no faults led to a 2nd place & Q!


Open FAST - Harley - A difficult send bonus doomed this run (A-Frame - tunnel - A-Frame). Otherwise, the run was a success!


Open JWW - Harley - A nice start then led to an off-course. This particular course was VERY tight, and a lot of dogs and handlers were having problems with it.


Novice JWW - Mo - Mo had a small refusal on the 3rd jump (he just went around it), but James recomposed him and finished the rest of the course clean. Novice dogs get 2 refusals, so Mo Q'd and came in 3rd place! [video]

So all in all, a great success. We're very proud of Mo earning 2 Q's his first trial, and he showed us that he can handle the pressure of a trial environment very well. Harley was her usual consistent self, earning several Q ribbons. We are looking forward to CPA's next trial at the Sports Center.

I also want to say thanks to our parents for coming out to see us on Saturday, and a special thanks to Deb for all her hard work getting Mo (and us!) ready for his first trial.

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