A Wild Rollacoaster Ride

You know, I’ve seen some nice course design in AKC agility. This venue… I’m sorry, I mean, this agility organization has matured. There are more and more AKC judges out there who design courses that pose interesting central challenges and provide nice flow.

And then there will be weekends like the one I just had showing under a matched pair of judges with an incredible technical streak who manage to humble every driven-dog handler by putting up challenges that only the slower tied-at-the-hip kind of dog will manage to solve.

I’m truly not complaining. I have pretty much decided that for me it will be a long campaign to the MACh because I’m a slow moving arthritic old man and my dog is a driven beast with a great work ethic. Given the qualifying requirements, I’ll be lucky to get to the ACK nationals… ever. I am content in that knowledge. So I approach every every trial weekend like a duffer in golf. The course is a puzzle and I finish happy when I Birdie and just about as happy when go way over par.

The JWW courses from Saturday and Sunday are worth sharing with you, so that you appreciate my definition of “incredibly technical”. I’ll share Sunday’s JWW today. I have a bunch of out of doors chores to do today.

Sunday Rollacoaster

This was the course put up by AKC judge Sherry Jefferson (at Westmorland County Obedience Training Club at B&D in Latrobe, PA). Take a moment to decide how you would try to survive this wild ride.

By my count this course features no fewer than seven wrong course options. An option, mind you, is a course that makes more sense to the dog than the one the judge actually numbered. It is a trap. And at least two of the options are set by gratuitous dummy jumps (as though the 5 naturally occurring options aren’t enough).

There’s not a lot of herk n’ jerk in this course; no wrapping, hard-aback turns, acute angle redirections. This is an important consideration. It means that the dog will get up to full speed when working, and stay there so that every challenge in the course comes at harrowing speed.

Here’s a YouTube of my run with Kory:
http://youtu.be/CZya1L2mshs.

We went off-course after jump #17 (stupid gratuitous dummy-jump). Dang… I was already doing my victory dance.

This course was a heap of fun for me. I wish I had it to do over again so that I could have put more urgency in that last left turn after jump #17. Oh well.

Phoenix

Marsha had a very nice weekend with our young boy Phoenix. He’s showing a lot of promise and starting to demonstrate that he’s getting the game. It’s rewarding to see a wild thing like him come along so nicely. He’s actually more steady than Kory was, at the same age. I’m sure she’ll share her exploits on her own blog (http://2mindogtrainer.wordpress.com/).

JazzMe UFoo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&v=3WHQ0twHQgo&NR=1

Blog905

Questions comments & impassioned speeches to Bud Houston Houston.Bud@gmail.com. The web store is up and running. www.dogagility.org/newstore. I have five volumes (over 100 pp each) of The Joker’s Notebook available on my web-store at an inexpensive price. These are lesson plans suitable for individual or group classes for teaching dog to work at a distance.

Tags: AKC, Backpass, Bud & Kory, JWW