Bell Vernon Kennel Club
Coupeville, Wa.
September 11, 12, 2004
Judge: Kylie Bourke
Two Day trial, outdoors on grass.
This is one of the most beautiful locations for an agility trial that I can imagine. The courses are set up on a nice grassy field with mile long beach only 50 feet away and a spectacular view of the Olympic mountains to the west. When we arrived on Friday night at 9 PM, it was blowing 30 mph and raining, and I had a van full of electronic timing gear that I had to find a place to unload so we could get to the camping gear. I ended up storing it in a U-Haul truck that wasn't locked, and hoped that the equipment and the truck would be there in the morning when the course was set up. If not, I was in very big trouble!!
Setting up the tent in the dark and in the rain and wind was "exciting". Al and Grace stayed in the van and waited until the humans had prepared their accommodations for the night, and then they dove into the tent and sleeping bags and snuggled up for the whole night. They are such good bed warmers!!
By morning the rain and wind had stopped and it was a relatively nice day. There was a High School Marching Band workshop sharing the site, and the campers were greeted with the "traditional morning wake up call" for the students which involved perhaps a half dozen students suddenly and at full volume playing an assortment of drums, bass drums and trumpets to wake up their compatriots. This was at 5:45AM!! They woke up everyone within a half mile radius with this cacophonic blast. Including Karla Kimmey, who was at ground zero. Karla stormed out of her motor home and put the fear of God into every one of the offenders and the noise stopped.
This is a very scenic spot for an Agility trial. You are looking down the Straits of Juan De Fuca and across the entry to Puget Sound. If it is clear, and it usually is during the summer and fall, you get a spectacular view of the Olympic Mountains which rise 6000 feet from right out of the water. The nicest part is that you can go for long walks on a deserted 1 1/2 Mile long beach that is about 100 feet from the edge of the Agility Courses. Al and Grace love it there.
It was small dogs first, and everything was wet from the rain storm the night before. It was 8:30 AM and the sun hadn't come out and there was a mist in the air. Despite the unpleasant conditions Al was raring to go.
Al broke from his sit at the start line, but didn't jump it. He realized that he was supposed to sit and stay, and actually sat briefly before I released him. We were off. He was able to avoid a trap which has gotten him many times, which was a jump that had the A Frame straight after the landing, but he was supposed to continue turning and follow me to another jump. We got it right, and were clean. Al did the rest of the course perfectly, including a fast and attentive sit at the table. He sprang off the table and into the weave poles. After the poles he tried to jump up on me to celebrate the poles, but I turned and was gone before he could jump up on me. Then it was over a couple of jumps, a tunnel, and then he did a perfect A frame with very good speed, and then we finished the run. It was a clean run!!
Al Qualified placing 5th. Al's time was 58.27 seconds. The Standard Course Time (SCT) was 77 seconds (180 yards)
This was a run like hell course and see what happens. It had a very hard opening sequence, although it didn't look like much of a problem when you saw the course map, it turned out that if you wanted to be fast, you had to run with the dog on your right through 5 jumps, and between jump 4 and 5, the dog had to be pushed on to the 5th jump. If you weren't running hard, the dog and the handler would collide. I was pretty sure that I could beat Al if I had a small lead out, and he gave it to me. By the time that we got to Jump 4 Al had caught up, and was beside me. I turned into him, and he adjusted by pushing away from me, and we didn't collide, and he had great speed for the 5th jump and the weave pole entry. He had pretty fast weave poles.
The next big challenge was to keep him on course between two tunnels. The dogs came out of one tunnel and had to enter a second tunnel right afterwards, but the entry wasn't the one the dogs were seeing when they came out of the first tunnel. It was really hard, but I called Al off and he followed me to the correct entry. The remainder of the course was pretty straight forward. I was ahead enough to get in some well timed front crosses, which felt nice.
Al Qualified earning a Double Q!! Al Placed 2nd. His time was 31.21 seconds. The Standard Course Time (SCT) was 44 seconds (144 yards).
It is really funny what happens sometimes on the course. We had another course I thought we could do well on, if we overcame a couple of tough issues. As it turned out, Al did the course just like I had hoped, with one exception. The club had a caterer come in and prepare breakfast food for the participants, and they set up about 50 feet from the Agility Course. Al smelled bacon right after he came down off the A Frame and followed his nose right past the jump he was supposed to take, he then walked/ran towards the delicious smell, realized that I was calling him, and then came back to me and back jumped the jump he had just refused. Now the rest of the run was just for fun and practice. Al did everything perfectly, except he missed the contact at the bottom of the Dog Walk, ( this was my fault, as I ran through the contact, and Al just followed me).
Al was very excited at the finish. For this I am proud of myself, because Al never knew that we hadn't Qualified. I was disappointed but he never knew it. In fact, Al was so happy and proud of himself that he jumped so high at the finish line that he was almost catchable in my arms at mid chest height.
Al's time was 65.33 seconds. The Standard Course Time (SCT) was 71 seconds (165 yards)
This was going to be a fun course. Al wouldn't hold his sit at the start line. Instead of putting the collar on him again, I just spun him and asked him to sit and he did it correctly this time. I got on the other side of the start line and called him over. We were off.
Al ran really well. We were really working well together until we were about 2/3 of the way through the course. We went over a jump and were supposed to turn about 140 degrees to the right and enter the weave poles, but Al was caught by the smell of the catered food again. He turned towards the aromatic beef stew that the caterer had prepared, and followed his nose to the side of the course and headed straight towards a man carrying a plate that was about to be his lunch. He realized what had happened, and turned quickly away and walked away from the course. Lucklily there was a fence, so Al heard my calls, turned and came back to me without back jumping anything. He then entered the weave poles and did them with speed, and we went on and finished the course. The judge didn't call a refusal so we had a clean run. I was sure that we were over course time, but someone came up to us after the scoring and told us that we had qualified. I was totally flaberghasted. It seemed like Al was gone forever. He must have a good sense of time, because he apparently knows how long a break he can take and still qualify ,while he is hunting for food??!!
Al Qualified placing 7th. Al's time was 43.01 seconds. The Standard Course Time (SCT) was 46 seconds (149 yards) He could have gone exploring for another 3 seconds!
Summary: This was another very good weekend for Al. He earned another Double Q, and Qualified in Three of his Four runs. Bad luck with food cost us a second Double Q which would have been incredible. Al's second place in the Saturday JWW run was very impressive. He beat some very good and fast dogs on a hard course.
