Tsuki brags (longish)

Ok I confess. Coming home with Q ribbons *is* more fun than just "doing
well" and even placing. Hee hee. USDAA changed its rules so that now
all the games are titling. And we are on a roll.

Since the new rules we've been in three USDAA trials. Its been going
very well, for the most part. Only place we are holding is in Standard.

In pairs we've had 3 pairs runs, 3 Qs and a title. In a small bit of
Synergy my partner in the first run also ran a GSD named Diva with
someone else. This week-end for our title I was paired with ... Diva.
To be honest this is partly as a result of the scoring which is faults
plus time. Pairs is one of the few where you can make a mistake and
still qualify if you are fast enough, and we are.

Tsuki is an excellent jumper. He is fast, but not the speediest. He
loves it, is responsive, and most importantly he keeps the bars up. We
regularly place ahead of much faster dogs because they knock the bars.
He is fast enough, however, that on Sunday I was told we lost a good five
seconds because I didn't pay attention to how far the finish line was
from the last jump. (good thing I didn't pet him! until I left the ring!)
Anyway we still had another five or more seconds to spare. So in the
among the last 3 trials we had 4 runs, 4 Qs and that got us a title and
an insurance leg.

So with three legs required for a title we've had three trials and made
two titles.

We are on our way with Gamblers with two legs. Of the five Gamblers runs
we've attempted we made the gamble on all five, but missed the opening
points on 2 of them. That's due to bad handling. Tsuki does what I tell
him, I just am unclear or tell him wrong.

Snooker is a bigger challenge. Tsuki does not like working close and he
doesn't believe is running past perfectly good fun obstacles. I find
more fun in "going for broke" than playing it safe so we get a lot of
quick whistles. This week-end we got our first Snooker Q. We were first
up. The teeter was the number 7, a good start as his teeter is very
reliable. I led out and when I saw him come zooming in butt tucked I
thought "uh oh" but with a lot of "here!" and "come" we actually got
through the whole course. I praised him to the nines, took him back to
our set up, gave him is due and then returned to work the score table.
The judge was in conference with the timer and scribe. Then she came up
to me and told me I was going to need to re-run for time. There was a
timeing problem. Yikes! Having gotten him all wound up the chances of
doing it again were .... um ... small. More to the point he did a great
job and I really wanted to leave it on that high note. But time is only
necessary to determine when to stop scoring, and as a tie breaker. So
she said that she was convinced I made it through 5 (all that was
necessary to Q) in plenty of time and if I would accept that I need not
re-run. I was perfectly happy to accept that. And in the end it was the
right decision. There were only two Q's in our height, and the other dog
would have beat us on time regardless.

So that was leg number one for Snooker.

Only Standard is legless. Still I can see progress. His a-frame
contacts are typically only 5-10%, this week-end he got 50%, last weekend
100%. He got the a-frame in both snooker and gamblers - i.e. when I
really wasn't babysitting them. So somehow we are making progress.

It was also reasonable weather, a little too warm, but not bad.

As a side note. Tsuki is really an incredibly easy dog to live with. He
is just so much more relaxed. And is slower to turn to guarding than my
other two were. I left him in the car with the door wide open and he was
perfectly accepting with dogs passing a foot from him. I used to have to
locate so that there was a minimum of traffic passing in view, this is
not an issue with him. Now I only have to keep dogs from coming right
into his face.

--
Diane Blackman
http://dog-play.com/
http://dog-play.com/shop2.html

wrote:
Ok I confess. Coming home with Q ribbons *is* more fun than just "doing
well" and even placing. Hee hee. USDAA changed its rules so that now
all the games are titling. And we are on a roll.

Since the new rules we've been in three USDAA trials. Its been going
very well, for the most part. Only place we are holding is in Standard.

Congratulations to you and Tsuki. I was kind of glad we got out of
novice before the new rules - I'm pretty sure Bonnie would never
have gotten a gamblers leg! On the other hand, she's a fabulous
snooker dog (one advanced snooker leg, should have been 2 but I
blew it on our second advanced snooker run. We would have easily
had our novice snooker title ages ago.

Mary

Diane said in rec.pets.dogs.activities:

USDAA changed its rules so that now
all the games are titling. And we are on a roll.

I love the games! They've been titling in AAC for about 5
years. A couple of weeks ago, I got my first ever Team Q (no
faults allowed in the AAC, so it's the hardest Q to get). Eddy
and Friday ran 35 seconds on a 65 second course, even with a
lengthy handover.

In Jumpers, we typically throw a Toonie into the pot, and get
some of the best runs that I've ever seen. Fastest clean run
takes the pot - money on the line seems to stop handlers from
over-handling and makes Jumpers a lot of fun. Spectators are
very quiet until the first fault, and then we *very* vocally
encourage the handler to go for speed. My best Jumpers rounds
have occured after making an early fault because it's all for
fun after that.

Don't get me started on Snooker. Coolest game ever, though not
suited to Friday and me, though Rocky and I are in Masters.

It is *so* cool that you've had such a successful and fun series
of trials with Tsuki.

--
--Matt. Rocky's a Dog.