Alex and I officially prefer USDAA over all other agility venues. We had a great time this weekend, an outdoor trial hosted by Quantum in Plainfield, IN gave us something to do this weekend. What an awesome place for an agility trial. Plainfield is a small suburb of Indianapolis and the event was held at “Pioneer Park” which is a great little park with a walking/bike trail that wrapped around the agility field and back through the woods – it was a GREAT place to walk the dogs before/between runs and gave us lots of places let them run (on leash of course!) I can definitely see making this an annual event!
So… Why is USDAA our favorite venue now? Many reasons, not the least of which is the number of runs. It’s like all the good of NADAC without all of the useless B.S. that makes NADAC frustrating! We got to run 12 times during the two day trial, nice!
Saturday was starters snooker (boy do we suck at this game, keeping Alex close to me is not something I’ve worked on a lot!! ye’ ol’ whistle after about 4 jumps!), starters jumpers (knocked half a dozen bars, I then walked him 200′ and he pooped, wasted run – my bad!), Grand Prix (1 knocked bar then missed the up contact on the dog walk and blew me off after self-releasing… we gave up on that run.), Steeplechase (no “Q” here either, the weaves were not staked down, causing them to basically slap himself in the face with them… not easy to finish that way!) plus three more runs…
The last three runs of the day were all “Qs” – yeah! 1st place in starters standard which was a fun run. Alex missed his weave enterance (which was tough… I didn’t set him up with enough room!) but then turned around, started over and fixed them himself, what a smart dude!) The 6th run of the day was Advanced Gamblers. Gamblers is Alex’s favorite USDAA class – he gets to make up the first part of the course then gets to work away from me for the ending, win-win! We pulled off another 1st place here with 40 points. The last class of the day (what! I was just getting into my grove!) was starters pairs, we were teamed up with a border collie named Ember who ran really well – we ended up in second place and earned our “Starters Pairs” title – cool, now we get to run with Abby and Whitney (who also earned their title) again in “Advanced” in the next USDAA trial.
Sunday wasn’t as profitable for us. We were zero for four in classes that mattered (gamblers, snooker, jumpers and standard) all due to knocked bars. On that note, Susan Salo’s “Foundation Jumping” DVD set has been ordered and is en route. We will let you know how much it helps us!!
The only “Q” we picked up on Sunday was from a “fun run” called “tunnels with a twist” which was a bit disappointing. Unlike the NADAC tunnelers courses that we have grown to love, this course was very, very tight and allowed very few strides between tunnels – not Alex’s kind of course. Abby and Whit weren’t in their element with it either but due to Abby’s kickassedness, they pulled off 2nd place over all (including all height classes and all Border Collies!)
Video soon to come…
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