August 22, 2009

UKC Show results from today

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Dazzle and I spent the day in Dayton at the UKC Rally show. It was our first time competing in a UKC event. There wasn't any A/C in the room where the Rally is being held, but thankfully it wasn't as blazing hot today as it has been this past week! Opening the windows actually helped!
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Dazzle did really well and I'm very proud of him. There were 2 trials today. We were in level 1B for both (there were no A's). In the first trial, he earned a 99 out of a possible 100! He lost the point on a very crooked sit-front for the first sign, but we had a rocky start because I forgot to remove his collar tags. So at the start line, I was fiddling with that and a bit distracted, but after the first sign, we were back on track and it was beautiful. There were 27 dogs in that level 1 B class with us. 4 got scores of 100, so we didn't place in the ribbons.
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In the second trial, his run felt even better than the first, very smooth and he was very responsive, I really thought it was going to be a 100. Out of the 19 dogs in our level, three others got scores of 98 along with us. No one got any higher than a 98. So this judge was scoring a bit lower than the first judge. The 4 way tie is broken by the time it took each dog to run the course. While I felt like we were moving out, apparently the other three were faster :-) We got 4th place, and a nice rossette. Points off were for a crooked sit (which I didn't think was very crooked at all) and a bump on a 270 left that was a tight fit right after the call front- left heel forward.
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Over all, I'm thrilled with his runs today. He is improving in his attentiveness and responsiveness and he's not crowding me on left turns like he was previously. Left turns used to be a bump with almost every step, 360's being the worst. But the left turns and 360 left today were picture perfect. Our freestyle practice has helped with that!
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If we can have as nice of a run tomorrow for the first show, he will have his UKC Level 1 title and I'll try a level 2 course (off-leash) for the 4th show.
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I didn't get any photos or video of his runs because I forgot I had the cameras in my bag, so I didn't ask anyone to use them. Maybe tomorrow. Not sure the lighting will be very good though. Most of the course is back-lit by windows and there's not a good place to stand to avoid that.
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