Riff OAJ! AKC Trial Videos

Saturday's Open Jumpers' run felt pretty good. I veered off too soon at that first tunnel, and he did exactly what I asked him to (oops), but AKC allows Open dogs to qualify with a refusal. Lucky for us!

Sunday's Open Jumpers' run was raggedy at the weaves. I thought we had two refusals and was sure we did not qualify, however the judge only called one. During the class briefing, this judge went through a detailed description of what constitutes a refusal at the weaves. She even took a pole and drew lines in the dirt by the weaves, and said "A dog has to go past this line..." etc etc. Obviously these two bobbles at the weaves equaled only one refusal for this judge. Which was cool for Riff, because this was his OAJ title run. He won the class! Must admit I had a "Moral Dilemma" moment about whether or not to accept the Q, but my friends insisted that the judge knows best. (Part of me still worries that this one will reach back and bite me, someday. Possibly in the form of a questionable contact call....)

Be that as it may, Riff is now at the Excellent A level in Jumpers With Weaves! Which means we'd better get some serious training in before our next show - with particular emphasis on weave entries (for Riff), and timely front crosses (for me).


I decided not to make the videos of our Open Standard runs public. They were....um.....messy. NG kindly described our Sunday run as "disconnected." I remember saying "ruh-roh" during the run, and laughing (hysterically?).....
Riff has exactly zero Open Standard Q's. We need three to move up to Excellent Standard. I hang onto the fact that Riff had nice start-lines this weekend. He missed only one contact. He didn't knock bars. He just....seemed lost. He looked away from me and veered onto the tourist track. Was he stressed? Bored? Was my handling just too sloppy and confusing for him? I don't know. We'll keep working at it.

Making progress in agility is all about the small steps. (I keep telling myself...) It's a tough, tough game. I need to hang on to the good moments. (....with fingernails chewed down to nearly nothing....)