Saturday, August 1, 2009

AAC Nationals - Day 1

The 2009 AAC Nationals are being held right in our backyard, at the Nepean National Equestrian Park! Almost 600 dogs entered in the six-ring circus. It was a warm, sunny day, but not too humid.

First up was Standard (link opens up the course map in a new window). Managed to get in a bit of a leadout to help him up the dogwalk. Near collision after the #2 tunnel! The weave entry was a problem, no surprise there, but amazingly after that he weaved all the way without popping! Of course, I forgot to rear cross the weaves and then messed up the out-jump right after by giving him no cue for it whatsoever.

Next was Jumpers. Didn't get quite as much of a leadout as I wanted and then didn't run fast enough to get ahead and failed to cue for jump #5, so Walter goes shooting toward the offcourse tunnel. A hard calloff (sorry Walter!!) for which I'm still hanging my head in shame! :-( "Come" to think of it, "COME!!" doesn't sound too different from "TUNNel!!" -- poor dog must have been so confused. Since when do I say "come" in agility anyway? Sigh. Poor Walter deflatedly managed the rest of the course and we got in a decent rear cross at jump #12.

Finally, Gamblers. I didn't try the teeter mini because I wasn't crazy about the approach angle to the teeter, but the weave mini was certainly doable. But, Walter was once again in last-pole-popping mode. The final gamble was definitely doable but I gave him WAY too "get out" to get him off the tire and over the jump so he was understandably quite certain that I also meant to get out to the far side of the #4 tunnel. What a good dog!

Here's the video, but it's not all that exciting, what with my bumbling, pokey handling and Walter in summer slow mode.


At the end of the day Walter had his first ever chiropractic session. So many people in the dog sports world including a ton of local folks swear by chiro (and massage of course), not only for treatment but also for prevention, so I figured why not? He wasn't too sure about the guy bear-hugging him for so long, but of course he was a very good boy and just waited patiently until it was over.

Back for three more runs tomorrow!

4 comments:

Natasha said...

Just watched the vid on YT already, but again, great runs!! You handled the Jumpers much better than I did, I caused 3 refusals...ugh! I didn't like that teeter approach in the mini gamble either, and Mika has a tough time with DW and teeter approaches sometimes (if she gets on it crooked she slips and scrambles to get her footing) so I didn't risk it.

Did you notice any changes in his agility or anything after the chiropractic adjustments? I've always been interested in chiropractic.

~Nat

Elf said...

My first time at Nationals was a disaster; you looked pretty good in comparison. Remington loved to stand up and look out the window, and he did so ALL the way to San Diego (8-10 hours of driving time) so not surprisingly he didn't want to run. There I was with a dog who walked onto the field and then sniffed around the lawn, in the main ring, figuring that everyone watching was thinking, "HOW did this dog qualify for nationals?!"

Muttsandaklutz said...

Hey Nat, Can't say I noticed anything different after his chiro... certainly wasn't a magical fix to his weave popping as he popped the six-weaves several times on Sunday :-)

Oh that Remington... lemme guess, his eyes were peeled for squirrels the whole way? Next year's Nationals are in Calgary, a 3 or 4 day drive so needless to say we won't be going -- Walter would be completely exhausted by the time we got there!

Elf said...

Remington: Although a thorough squirrelhund at home, on the road it was all about cattle! I could even point out a window and say "there's a cow" and his head would immediatly swing in that direction and he'd peer and peer until he saw them, then watch them closely until they were out of sight. He could identify cows when they were not much more than dots on a hillside. How a suburban mixed breed dog ever learned about cows on hillsides, I'll never know. And there were a LOT of hillsides between here & San Diego!