Flying Poodles

We did some agility today

Dancer and Elly and I competed at the Sheltie Club agility trial at Argus Ranch today. Nice, but there were shelties everywhere.

I only competed for one day. Elly took first place with a 64-point Q (out of a possible 80) in Open FAST–a strategy version of agility where you set your own course and there’s a distance challenge as part of the course. The distance challenge was two jumps 13 feet away from the challenge line. Very few dogs Q’d so I am very proud of Elly. We also ran standard and jumpers, but my timing was off and we utterly failed to Q.

Dancer wasn’t interested in the distance challenge in Novice FAST, but she’d just crashed a bar on a jump–it was entirely my fault–so I can’t blame her. She ran very nicely in Novice Jumpers, though she required close handling, and finished a 99 yard course in 36.10 seconds with a Q and a first place of her own, slightly under course time. In standard, she refused to do the dogwalk or the teeter–both of which she has issues with–but did nicely on the rest of the course. The judge, Lisa Potts (also a poodle person), complimented my patience with her.

The Jumpers courses were interesting. There were no repeats in the course, so lots and lots of jumps were out there! There were several places where I would have liked to layer jumps (put a jump between me and the dog), which I did with Elly by accident. Dancer needed me RIGHT THERE so I didn’t try it with her.

I got permission from the judge to post her Excellent FAST course and comment on how people handled the course, so I’ll be doing that in the next few days.