3 Dog Days: Invitational Report

I'll do this by days... for those that don't know- this is Fancy's fourth invite to the AKC Invitational. The first year Fancy had only been doing agility for half a year when she was invited, but I was the weak link and got lost on course. The second year we made it into the finals and I messed up, rear crossing too hard and causing a refusal at a jump. Still we made it onto the Animal Planet showing and had an unofficial placement of 6th in the 20 inch class. Our third year we were not working well together and had only two clean runs. This year... read on!

Day 1- FAST Warm Up
I arrived and found my crating spot which was really close to the actual rings. I got lucky because I was almost on the end of a row and I was in the tent closest to the rings. I was happy I didn't have to fight my way down the isles through four tents to get to the rings like the people who were in the farthest tent had to. We ran FAST and I practiced the contacts but since I haven't made Fancy hold her contacts in shows in years she didn't hold them in the warm up, which is what I expected. Fancy ran fast and happy.

Crating tent.

Agility tent. Nice sod.

Main ring one.

Second ring.

Day 2- JWW and Standard
It was pouring. I drove really slow because of the torrential rain. We arrived and ran for the tents and got all wet. Many of the crates in the tents were wet. I was lucky because I had Fancy in her vari kennel on my dolly so she was dry all day.

Nice and dry and guarding my camera.

We ran jumpers first and Fancy reverted back to her slower speed. But it wasn't horribly slow, and I used front crosses to speed her up. This course had many clean runs. I think the judges wanted to allow us to have success in our first run. We ran clean which fulfilled our goal of being clean in our first run so we could look forward to the rest of the weekend.

Next was standard and Fancy was much faster. I'm not good at the blow by blow because I can't really even remember the courses. I do remember it started with a tunnel which she came zipping out of and I did lots of front crosses even though I am better at rears. The fronts let me get ahead so if she is going slower she has to catch up. On this course I didn't need to speed her up, but I wanted to keep her moving. Ran clean again.

We were done really early and as soon as I was done, we went to check out the vendors and meet the breed. On the way back we got caught in the rain and soaked. While walking around, Fancy got lots of compliments on how beautiful she is, which is always amusing to me. I think Fancy is very cute, even adorable, but I don't think of her as beautiful. One person told me their friend has a Tibetan Terrier that exact same color. And they recognized her as a TT without asking! Then Fancy got a break and I took Pie and Dottie over the breed ring areas. I bought a great huge stuffed toy bigger than Pie for the two Mals to play with. Dottie managed to latch onto it, and I could not get her off. The more things I tried the harder she pulled until finally I borrowed some cookies and shoved one practically up her nose, whereupon she immediately let go and I removed the toy. Which was good since the breed and vendor area was very crowed and she was making a scene. Both Pie and Dottie attracted the attention of some K-9 handlers and those cops pet them. I think they were surprised how friendly Pie was. I think they are used to Mals who do not try to crawl into their laps while wagging their tails so hard they almost fall over. They got pet by lots of other people too, but Dottie was too excited to be a pleasure to walk, so they didn't stay out too long.

The river in the crating area. You can see a video of the dog bowl race here. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnBUnWjgGEw Some competitors were seriously upset about the conditions, but I am more of the feeling- the AKC did not cause the weather, and they did the best they could to make it better... Also, since the AKC is actually about the breed ring and obedience and agility and all the other games come in second, we are lucky they hold this event at all.

Drove home in the pouring rain and horrible traffic.

Day 3- JWW and Hybrid and Finals
Today the general walk through started at 6 am. My class wasn't going to start until maybe 10, but I got up at 3:45 to make it in time for the general because my first year at the invitational, I forgot one of the courses, and if that happened again this year because I was too tired to make if for the general, I would only have myself to blame. I watched all the dogs run before us, and I love seeing all the unusual breeds, and the super fast and really good more popular breeds that had to work really hard to get in. I thought our jumpers run went really well. If I lead out with Fancy she tends to be sad and run slower, so I've been doing running front crosses rather than leading out. It was 2 jumps into a box and I was worried if I didn't do the front cross correctly she'd be over the third jump before I could catch her, which happened to many dogs in the 24 inch jump height. But we did that part well and she had really nice fast weaves too. We finished clean!

The hybrid round was basically standard with no dog walk. This course was really fun. I did a serpentine type thing to get her in the weaves. It was a left turn after the poles and I was on the left so as soon as her nose passed the second to last pole I called her into the chute, which got us a nice turn. It was then a really long run and Fancy loves long runs. I actually remembered to decelerate to cue a front cross and as soon as I saw her read it, I took off to get into position to get another FC in on the other side of the same jump. Sometimes I am able to handle like Mia has taught me to. The trickiest part of the course was next. From the teeter you went into the tunnel which was on the other side of the a frame. Then you and to get to the other side of the tunnel because if you were too slow, they'd zip into the chute. At the last second I chickened out and held back because I thought she'd run into me coming out of the tunnel. I almost didn't hold back far enough and she almost hit me anyway, so I had to dance out of the way, and still try to redirect her from the chute to the jump to the right. She was able to redirect to the jump and we made it over the jump and up the a frame. I was going to do one more FC before the triple, but she was moving so fast I couldn't make it and rear crossed. Clean again and into the finals!

Getting the finals ring set up. Who me? Obsessively watch as they set up, then obsessively walk? Never!

One thing I don't like is they only take one dog of each breed in each jump hight into the finals. There was a BC in first and second place and a golden in third and sixth and seventh (or something like that- 3 goldens)... But only one BC and one golden got to go on. Even if they had taken all the dogs in the top spots, we still would have made the finals, but since they do it like that, going into the finals we went from 9th place (they took 11 dogs) to being seeded sixth. Fancy was the fastest non fast dog. What I mean by that is the cumulative time of the dog placed right before her was 119 (two BCs, three goldens, Aussie, Terv and a beardie) and then there was a huge difference of 14 seconds between Fancy and the faster dogs. Her cumulative time was 133 then the rest of the dogs were after her. That is a good accomplishment for us.

Posted scores. Check means you get to move onto the finals.

They let us walk for 15 minutes and I walked for 14 of those. I was super happy with Fancy's speed. Last time we were in the finals she was not her fastest, but this time she was. We were not clean- off course into the wrong side of the tunnel. I completely forgot to say her name before she took the jump into the tunnel and when I saw her heading for the wrong side, I do not think I stopped moving. I think I chased after her screaming her name. Probably if I would have stooped and said "DOWN!" I might have been able to save us, but one (I have lots!) of my weaknesses as a handler is I can't think fast enough. Also, the crowd saw us going off course and started screaming and even as I was shouting I couldn't hear myself so who knows if she could hear me! I put her back in the correct side and we finished strong. Her speed was super! I looked at the results today and using her posted time, which included an off course tunnel (doing the tunnel twice), her time was fast enough to put us in fourth place! But, since were were not clean we NQed instead. I feel like, "someday I'd like to run clean in the finals" but really I'm just lucky to be there. Fancy is an awesome dog, but if it were not for the unique way dogs qualify for the Invitationals, we wouldn't ever be in the finals! So instead I'll think "someday I'd like to be a better handler!"

Our unofficial placement was 8th. Unofficial because if you do not go clean you don't get a placement.

Fancy and her loot.

Fancy is such an awesome teammate. I've learned things from every dog I've trained, and she has really taught me about finding what works for each individual dog, and not just handling wise, but motivation wise too. The best part about the show this year was how fast she was through out it. I got to show off the dog Fancy is capable of being, when she wants to.