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New AKC Agility regs announced
The new AKC agility regs are in the December minutes:
http://www.akc.org/pdfs/about/board_minutes/1205.pdf Summary on page 6, actual changes start page 9. Lots of small changes, a few big ones--a new 26" height which will have a 6'3" aframe, new weave specs which will make a lot of current weave poles illegal, and a break for small dogs--the cutoff for 8" has been raised to 11". Dogs now have to be 15 months old to compete. And a new class! FAST (Fifteen and Send Time) involves an opening and a gamble. I've read the rules twice and don't really understand them, but I'm sure once we get some course examples up that will help. |
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New AKC Agility regs announced
Robin Nuttall said in
rec.pets.dogs.activities: Lots of small changes, a few big ones--a new 26" height which will have a 6'3" aframe, new weave specs which will make a lot of current weave poles illegal, and a break for small dogs--the cutoff for 8" has been raised to 11". Dogs now have to be 15 months old to compete. Pretty well thought out changes, I think, and they don't seem to require a lot of expense on the part of the club for equipment changes. New (longer) weave poles and 5' bars for the spread jumps are all inexpensive PVC. I think they should have gone to 18 months, though any number is arbitrary what with the wide range of dogs competing - but at least 18 months would have made them consistent with every other agility organisation in North America. The big change (to me, though I don't compete in the AKC), is mandating that the teeter be slatless. I've never seen a reason for slats on the teeter or dogwalk. And a new class! FAST (Fifteen and Send Time) involves an opening and a gamble. I've read the rules twice and don't really understand them, but I'm sure once we get some course examples up that will help. If I'm reading the rules correctly, FAST sounds an awful lot like AAC's gamble. AAC has "mini gambles" which are optional in the opening (ie: you can do them away for double point value or do them close for regular obstacle value), similar to FAST's "send bonus". Instead of a closing gamble, FAST adds a time fault from end of SCT to finish point (similar strategy to AAC's gamble whereby the handler wants to be close to the final gamble when the horn sounds). It sounds like a fun game. -- --Matt. Rocky's a Dog. |
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New AKC Agility regs announced
Matt wrote: Pretty well thought out changes, I think, and they don't seem to require a lot of expense on the part of the club for equipment changes. New (longer) weave poles and 5' bars for the spread jumps are all inexpensive PVC. Heh. Obviously, you missed the change to the weave pole requirements which says that the supports must be on the opposite side of the dog's path; there's a fair amount of angst going on on the Agiledogs list about having to buy new poles to comply with that one. And speaking of weave poles, I think we've got an agility first both with that and with the requirement that pole bases now be done in a nonslip finish - the AKC is making a safety change mandatory BEFORE NADAC got around to it. ;-D And yes, Robin, you BET I've posted to the NADAC list about the non-slip issue...I'm waiting with interest, to see if my post makes it to the list. I don't care much if it does, since my actual intent was to tweak Sharon. ;-D Weave bases are very much a pet peeve of mine... especially since just prior to the discussion getting started on Agiledogs, I watched video of an agility trial in early Nov, and in one place you can CLEARLY see Rocsi's hind feet slip on the pole bases. |
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New AKC Agility regs announced
"cimawr" said in rec.pets.dogs.activities:
Pretty well thought out changes, I think, and they don't seem to require a lot of expense on the part of the club for equipment changes. New (longer) weave poles and 5' bars for the spread jumps are all inexpensive PVC. Heh. Obviously, you missed the change to the weave pole requirements 38 pages of pdf? Hah! Of course I missed lots of stuff. which says that the supports must be on the opposite side of the dog's path; there's a fair amount of angst going on on the Agiledogs list about having to buy new poles to comply with that one. When course building, I've always set it up that way. I've never enountered a set of weaves which required dogs to enter and exit over bases - most weave bases have moveable stabilizers. Rethinking, I really like the very secure weave bases that have non-movable stabalizers out to *both* sides which don't often require spiking. I suppose that this is what the AKC is getting rid of. -- --Matt. Rocky's a Dog. |
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New AKC Agility regs announced
cimawr wrote:
And yes, Robin, you BET I've posted to the NADAC list about the non-slip issue...I'm waiting with interest, to see if my post makes it to the list. I don't care much if it does, since my actual intent was to tweak Sharon. ;-D Oh you meanie! I do think the nonslip and the offset stabilizer bars are important, but it is going to hurt our club a bit. We just had our first AKC trial, kept it small and worked a lot more on making people happy than making money, so we didn't clear much. We're a little club, and we want to spend some of that money on some of our other activities. So we are really going to have to have some discussion about what to do about financing the changes. Weave bases are very much a pet peeve of mine... especially since just prior to the discussion getting started on Agiledogs, I watched video of an agility trial in early Nov, and in one place you can CLEARLY see Rocsi's hind feet slip on the pole bases. Another thing, the AKC is now suggesting weaves be 22" in spacing, it was 21" before. I think 22" should be mandatory across all venues. Still tight enough to not penalize the little dogs, but big enough to make a huge difference to the big dogs. |
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New AKC Agility regs announced
"Robin Nuttall" wrote in message
news:I33qf.641763$_o.470772@attbi_s71... Another thing, the AKC is now suggesting weaves be 22" in spacing, it was 21" before. I think 22" should be mandatory across all venues. Still tight enough to not penalize the little dogs, but big enough to make a huge difference to the big dogs. Actually, the old AKC rule said they could be anything from 20" to 24". They *did* suggest 22". But the whole range was allowed. Have they strengthened their "suggestion"? And my little dogs have been trained on 22 inches - we suffer from pop-outs when we go to a trial that has weaves 20 to 21 inches. We ran a trial last summer with a set that was 20 1/2 and could not get Sassy through twelve the entire weekend. We (by the last run, formed a group!) started watching for some little handler error that was pulling her out but decided the bottom line was her pacing. ~~Judy who plans to print out the new rules and maybe get around to reading it by New Year's Day or so. No way it's going to happen this week. |
#7
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New AKC Agility regs announced
Robin Nuttall said in
rec.pets.dogs.activities: Another thing, the AKC is now suggesting weaves be 22" in spacing, it was 21" before. I think 22" should be mandatory across all venues. If it's going to be changed, I think it should go to 24", which (I believe) is the international/European standard. -- --Matt. Rocky's a Dog. |
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New AKC Agility regs announced
Rocky wrote:
Robin Nuttall said in rec.pets.dogs.activities: Lots of small changes, a few big ones--a new 26" height which will have a 6'3" aframe, new weave specs which will make a lot of current weave poles illegal, and a break for small dogs--the cutoff for 8" has been raised to 11". Dogs now have to be 15 months old to compete. Pretty well thought out changes, I think, and they don't seem to require a lot of expense on the part of the club for equipment changes. New (longer) weave poles and 5' bars for the spread jumps are all inexpensive PVC. Yes, except I'd say 95% of the weaves here have crossbar supports, and they will need to now have offset leg supports. I paid $500 for my Max200 weaves four years ago, and a friend of mine just bought an identical set--lord knows how much she paid. Now relegated to practice. Plus, some of our jumps aren't tall enough or made so that you can add a 26" height. So we may have significant jump expense. The difference may make us reconsider doing a 2-ring 2-judge trial next year, I am not sure we can afford to make all those changes and fill 2 rings with equipment. I'm not saying they're bad changes, but they will take a chunk of money. The big change (to me, though I don't compete in the AKC), is mandating that the teeter be slatless. I've never seen a reason for slats on the teeter or dogwalk. They'll almost certainly stay on the DW, and I have only seen one slatted teeter in competition in 5 years, they were already extremely rare. The elimination of the 8' dogwalk is causing some consernation for those who run Novice-only trials in smaller spaces. But again, most clubs use 12' anyway. If I'm reading the rules correctly, FAST sounds an awful lot like AAC's gamble. AAC has "mini gambles" which are optional in the opening (ie: you can do them away for double point value or do them close for regular obstacle value), similar to FAST's "send bonus". Instead of a closing gamble, FAST adds a time fault from end of SCT to finish point (similar strategy to AAC's gamble whereby the handler wants to be close to the final gamble when the horn sounds). It sounds like a fun game. I think it will be fun. You *must* complete the gamble portion in order to Q, but you can do it at any time. If you flub, you can't try it again. And you have to do at least 15 obstacles, all of which are assigned a point value. I don't understand it completely yet but I'm looking forward to it. |
#9
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New AKC Agility regs announced
Robin Nuttall wrote: Yes, except I'd say 95% of the weaves here have crossbar supports, and they will need to now have offset leg supports. I paid $500 for my Max200 weaves four years ago, and a friend of mine just bought an identical set--lord knows how much she paid. Now relegated to practice. You've probably seen it, but Sharon Normandin posted to Agiledogs that Max200 is looking at ways to retrofit their weaves. Plus, some of our jumps aren't tall enough or made so that you can add a 26" height. Adding jump cups is only easy if your jumps are A. tall enough and B. made of either PVC or wood. One of my clubs uses welded metal jumps, and it would be a major PIA if new heights had to be added. Fortunately, about half of club #1's jumps already have 26" bar supports for those who want to practice for USDAA, so there won't be a problem for anyone who needs/wants to start practicing the height for AKC. (99% of club #2's members *only* do NADAC, so no worries there, either- although it wouldn't be too hard to add the extra supports to our wooden jumps.) It would be a major expense and nuisance, even so, if we needed to retrofit to have enough jumps to actually put on a trial with the height - so I can imagine what an issue it's going to be for clubs like yours, that DO host AKC trials. I think it will be fun. You *must* complete the gamble portion in order to Q, but you can do it at any time. If you flub, you can't try it again. And you have to do at least 15 obstacles, all of which are assigned a point value. I don't understand it completely yet but I'm looking forward to it. I'll be interested to hear how it works out - and to see if it lessens the "running at heel" style I see in some newbies-to-NADAC. (Not that I have room to talk, since Rocsi's lateral distance skills suck. FORWARD distance, she's got. G) Have to say, though, that I was a bit amused by a couple of posts going "Oh no, with THREE classes we'll be there 'til midnight!!!".... since I've been to dozens of trials with 4 classes a day that easily finished by 3:30 or so, and even with the 5-6 classes a day that are now routine, we usually finish between 5 and 6 if the trial's run at ALL efficiently. |
#10
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New AKC Agility regs announced
cimawr wrote:
Robin Nuttall wrote: Have to say, though, that I was a bit amused by a couple of posts going "Oh no, with THREE classes we'll be there 'til midnight!!!".... since I've been to dozens of trials with 4 classes a day that easily finished by 3:30 or so, and even with the 5-6 classes a day that are now routine, we usually finish between 5 and 6 if the trial's run at ALL efficiently. Well we ran a very efficient trial. One judge, two rings, other ring set up as dogs were running ring 1. Judge took NO lunch breaks, barely any breaks at all. It still took until 4:30 the first day. We shortened walkthroughs further the 2nd day and managed to finish by 3:30, but we were hustling butt all weekend long. I don't know about NADAC, but in AKC ribbons cannot be awarded until the judge reviews and approves every score sheet. So that has to be done between classes. Plus AKC judges actually MEASURE their courses and wheel them for 3 different heights, so 3 different wheels, not including the walk through to tweak and ensure the course builders have built what was on paper. Baseline measurements are used to ensure that the course seen is exactly like the one on paper. The judge can and will change things if they decide they don't like the flow, but they will also tell people. AKC is also mandated to have judge briefings before each class. Now they will often combine Jumpers and Standard, but that's still at least 3 briefings per day, and the Novice ones tend to get a bit long to make sure they've answered all questions. I can tell you with great assurance that we could not have run a tighter trial. Now the judge could have nested a bit more but again, you never see AKC courses where the course remains the same for all levels with just a change in time. Generally big stuff stays in place but jumps move so that different levels are actually different. If we stay with a 1-judge 2-ring format this year, we will not offer FAST. If we move to 2 judges, we may well offer FAST. |
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