CKC Trial at Georgia Dog Gym

This blog is called DogsNQuilts so it is time for me to talk about my dog. Today was the Continental Kennel Club Obedience and Agility Trial at the Georgia Dog Gym. It was cloudy and wet from all the rain last night, but it was also a nice 70 degrees.

I like the way the CKC Agility rules are set up. The Novice levels are pretty mellow. It lets you get started trialing on easier lower stress courses. ASCII and I got the Novice level I qualification with no problem and got second place in our class. We also go the level II Q and got third place. I did notice that ASCII did not want to lay down on the wet table, and did not want to sit on the wet grass at the start line. He just got groomed yesterday and apparently did not want to mess up his 'do by getting it wet.

On Novice level III the course has obstacles side by side and it tests obstacle recognition. This should have been easy, but most of us messed it up. The course was a big S shape and on each leg of the S was a pair of obstacles and you were allowed 2 faults. The point of the course was to send the dog through the appropriate obstacle. I started out lining up on the wrong side of ASCII so he thought he should take the tunnel instead of the A-Frame.

Then the second leg of the S had two jumps side by side. I ran a little too close again and he started to go to the left jump instead of the right one. I called him back and he took the correct jump but ended up out of position for the next jump in the course. He ran by it, then when I called him back to try again he back jumped the jump.

Then we went on the last leg of the course and I think I pushed ASCII's course again. I needed to draw him to the left by running to the left myself. He ended up starting to taking the tunnel instead of the chute, I called him before he went to far in, then he wouldn't go through the chute. He's been through that chute a bunch of times, but he wasn't sure about it this time. We finally got through the chute and over the final jump but by that time we already had too many faults. Even though we did not qualify we ended up getting 2nd place in our class.

Unfortunately because we did not qualify for Novice III, that meant we could not qualify on any of the Intermediate runs. This time we were allowed to run For Exhibition Only which meant we just did not get credit for them. When we ran the Intermediate I course and would have qualified. Then it started raining for about 20 minutes.

We started the Intermediate II course and ASCII would not lay down on the wet table. Since I knew I couldn't qualify anyway I went ahead and touched him to get him to lay down. We ran the rest of the course clean.

The final run of the day was the Intermediate III course. I think we had one fault but also would have qualified.

The trial will continue tomorrow. There will be three runs for the Supreme class then there will be three different games, which I will run for exhibition only. It should be fun.