Trial Recap: CPA AKC September 4-6 Charlotte

We had the pleasure of celebrating Labor Day weekend at Carolina Piedmont Agility's AKC trial in Charlotte. Since it was a holiday weekend and both Kristen and I had Monday off from work, we competed in all 3 days. Another milestone was we started Mo running 2 classes a day - we had been just doing 1 class a day just to see how he performed in a trial setting. He's been doing so well, we thought it was time to up his workload slightly.


The event was at the Charlotte Sports Center, the same site as CPA's July 4th trial. Greg, president of CPA, really listened to all the feedback, positive and otherwise, from the July trial and what resulted was a very smooth operation. Crating was much more spacious and organized, and the vendors easier to get to. The running surface was superb, as always. The sports center has artificial turf with embedded rubber pellets, giving excellent grip and cushion.


The weekend ended up being VERY productive for both Harley and Mo, and we had a great time hanging out with all our friends.


With all the runs in the weekend, I'll just go over the hightlights:


SATURDAY 9/4
Excellent A Standard - Harley - Harley had a great run on her first Excellent Standard course. She had earned her Open Standard title at the end of her last trial (Greensboro). Best way to start the day, with a 2nd place & Q! [video]

Open FAST - Harley - Harley continued her streak with another 2nd & Q in FAST. The send was a gracious jump-tunnel-jump combo in flow, which Harley nailed. [video]


Mo - Mo had some difficulty his first day. A wrong course in JWW, and some issues on the dog walk kept us Q-less. That's all part of being a novice dog though! Plenty of things to work on!


SUNDAY 9/5
Open FAST - Harley - Despite a hard send bonus (A-Frame-Jump-Jump), Harley nailed it, and finished up her last Open class with a 3rd place! All Excellent from now on! [video]


Excellent A JWW- Harley  - Harley was being a little slow on this course, which ended up being a very good thing. A very tight, twisty course led many of the faster dogs off course, or knocking bars. She still came well under time, and most importantly clean for the Q and a 1st place! [video]


Novice FAST- Mo - Mo had his favorite obstacle in the send bonus - the A-Frame - which made things pretty easy! He burned up the course, earning 72 points in 23 seconds(!) for a 1st place. [video]


MONDAY 9/6
Excellent A JWW- Harley - Harley was clean and accurate on her JWW run, earning a 2nd place & Q. [video]


Excellent A Standard- Harley - Harley traditionally has had trouble in Standard, but not this weekend! I think we're finally getting all the wrinkles out, and she's becoming more and more consistent. Harley blazed through the course for a 1st and Q! While it doesn't really count until we get into Excellent B, it was a double-q for the day in Standard and JWW! [video]


Novice JWW- Mo - Mo capped off his weekend with a stellar JWW run. He had one refusal (which, in my opinion, was a debatable call). Regardless, you get 2 refusals in novice, so it was still a Q! And a 1st place! [video]

A very successful weekend bounty!

With all that, Harley only has 1 more leg in Standard and JWW to earn her Excellent A title. Once that's completed, we can start working towards our Excellent B title and a MACH! A MACH title is very hard to accomplish - it requires 20 double q's and 750 MACH points. A dog earns MACH points by each second they are under the Standard Course Time (SCT) in Standard or JWW. We were very happy with Mo's performance, despite an odd fear of the dog walk in the Standard ring. It seemed to be something with that particular dog walk, since he did the one at DogHaven just fine Sunday night, and went over it backwards just fine on Monday. We're very happy with his progress so far, with 1 leg in each class!

Our next trial is October 3rd in Columbia, SC. See you all then!

Titling Progress: Harley
ExcA Standard (AX) - 2/3 legs 
ExcA JWW (AXJ) - 2/3 legs
Open FAST (XF) - 3/3 legs ** NEW TITLE


Titling Progress: Mo
Novice Standard (NA) - 1/3 legs
Novice JWW (NAJ) - 1/3 legs
Novice FAST (NF) - 1/3 legs

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.