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

Davidson News Story!

Our good friends at DavidsonNews.net has posted another story about Harley!

Brenda Barger has become a great fan of Harley and has been posting updates about Harley and our agility accomplishments in her semi-weekly "Around Davidson" column. We greatly appreciate not only the exposure she has given to Harley, but also to the sport of agility.

Here's a listing of all the stories so far:

• Watching Harley jump, a Blackburn baby, grads (6/23/2009)
  
• Popcorn rally, Alaska travels, dog jumping and more (10/1/2009)
• Honors for Cubmaster Christopher, June Kimmel, and Harley (12/10/2009)
  

Cynosport Pictures

We've been inundated with requests for pictures from our trip to Cynosport. After getting settled, we finally got around to getting them posted!

2009 Cynosport Games

Arizona & The Cynosport World Games

Just returned from our trip out west to the Cynosport World Games in Scottsdale, AZ. What an experience! We were very fortunate for Laura (James' sister) and her son Ewan to accompany us from Iowa.

We left on Wednesday, November 11th flying to Phoenix with a layover in Dallas/Ft Worth. Harley did very well in the airport and on the plane, although the Charlotte ticket counter gave us a little trouble. After picking up our rental car and getting to the hotel, it was already 12:30 AM (2:30 ET) and we had to be at the trial site at 7:00!

Thursday's itinerary included our Performance National Standard agility run and dock diving. Cynosport certainly tests your handling and course memorization as everyone walks in the morning, but you and your dog might not run it until hours later. Luckily for James, our scheduled run time was only about 1.5 hours after the walk-through.

The course was tough, and as such, I decided to be cautious and conservative in my plan. When we ran, I found myself VERY nervous, and it showed. Harley was a good sport and kept with me, but dropped the second to last jump bar, which I can only blame myself for since I didn't put her in a good position. I tried doing a rear-cross after the weaves (18) but realized Harley didn't have enough momentum yet, and my rear made her jump early. She landed on the bar (19). As always, I congratulated Harley at the finish for a great run. The dropped bar had put us just short of advancing to the Semifinals.

The Splash Dogs Dock Diving competition started shortly after our agility run. We did 3 'waves' during the course of the day, and each wave includes 2 jumps, the higher of which determines your score. We posted consistent jumps around the 18 and 19 foot marks, with our longest jump being 20 feet 6 inches.

Friday was Kristen's turn on the Performance Speed Jumping Semifinals course. Unlike the previous day, our run was not as close to the walk-through. Kristen walked the course around 8:00am, and her run was not scheduled until 2:20pm! Despite the long wait, Kristen kept the course fresh in her mind by watching other competitors' runs throughout the day. Harley did very well again, but missed her weave poll entry. She didn't get any faults for it, but the time taken to reset her back in the weaves put us outside of the top dogs. Only the top eight dogs in each height class advanced, and the slowest time of the eight in our height was 25 seconds!

We had 3 more waves of Dock Diving on Friday, and each jump was around the 17 to 19 foot mark. Harley made an impression on the announcer, who frequently remarked on her good form and how beautiful she was.

Saturday was a down day. We did one dock diving wave in the morning and then decided to drive out to the Grand Canyon as neither of us had ever been. The drive from Scottsdale was about 3.5 hours though the desert and mountains near Flagstaff. To our surprise, we drove through a snow flurry! It had been in the 70's in Scottsdale, and we were a bit unprepared for how cold it would be at the Grand Canyon. Despite the cold temperatures, the views were breathtaking. Our only regrets were not having more time to wander (we got there an hour before sunset) and not bringing warmer clothes!

Sunday went very quickly. James ran the European Jumpers course. Harley didn't do very well as she was very distracted during the run. I can't blame her - it had been a long week and she was doing much more than she would do at a normal trial.

We did qualify for the Dock Diving finals on Sunday, but unfortunately we couldn't compete since we had to catch our flight home.

After our run, we packed up everything and headed to the airport. After 2 long flights, we picked up our puppy, Mo, from my parents' house. We finally made it home at 12:30am, just in time to go to sleep and go to work the next morning!

Even though we didn't advance past the first rounds, we throughly enjoyed ourselves. USDAA knows how to put on a great trial and treat the competitors right! We hope to qualify again this coming year, especially since it was announced that the Cynosport Games would be heading east to either Philadelphia or somewhere in Kentucky.

Our next trial is in December, wish us luck!