Meeker CPE and AKC Trials
16 Nov 2008
I’ve been to two one day trials with Meeker recently, a CPE trial at For Your Canine in Schiller Park, IL and his first AKC trial at WI-IL Agility Group in Spring Grove, IL.
19-Oct-2008 CPE For Your Canine Judge: Carol Steffus-Hyland
| Qualified | Event | Place | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|
| Q | Wildcard | 1 | Missed weave entry on rear cross - I may have pulled him off. |
| NQ | Wildcard | - | Called him over jump on his way off course so he dropped bar. Went off course. |
| Q | Jackpot | 1 | He missed A Frame down contact but judge wasn't in position to call it, so the Q was a "gift". |
| Q | Jackpot | 1 | |
| Q | Std | 1 | Barely in contact on A Frame Self release on teeter and dog walk. Handling felt good. |
The trial was on our “home turf” (home mats?) only 20 minutes away where we take two classes a week, that makes it so easy to trial there. Since I’m not really a CPE maniac I’ve decided I’ll probably only ever do CPE at this site. We’ll just chip away at the titles over the years.
Carol Steffus-Hyland is a very nice judge and she nested her courses nicely so the fourteen course changes we did (due to the three levels for each of the five games) went smoothly. Even with almost no messing around it was a ten hour trial day.
CPE is a great venue in which to get started, but you end up having to do a lot of runs to get through the titles. After this trial Meeker only needs 2 Full House and 1 Colors runs to be in Level 4 across the board.
16-Nov-2008 AKC Judge: Rae Tanner
| Qualified | Event | Place | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|
| Q | FAST | 2 | Held his start line stay in a down. Very nice A Frame down contact. I was late on jump wrap cue after A Frame, he went wide. |
| Q | Std | 1 | Little high on A Frame after straight on approach. Self release on DW, spun afterwards. Sit on table, but I forgot, cost a couple seconds. |
| Q | JWW | 1 | Held his start line. Nice run, I was a little conservative so I could be more attentive. |
It’s been ages since I’ve done an AKC trial and it was good to see some folks at the trial that I haven’t seen in a while. It was also nice to see how well other dogs we train with were doing in this trial, lots of placement ribbons. The WAG building is a little tight but the Novice only trial moved along pretty quickly and everyone was supportive and in good spirits.
I liked Rae Tanner’s courses. Especially the JWW course, it will make for a nice class course. I got her OK to post it, so you’ll see it here eventually.
Here’s the video for the AKC trial - a big thanks to Cindy for video taping all day! You can see I’m not pushing Meeker or hustling to get the fastest times, just looking for clean runs.
It was really nice having folks come up to me tell me they enjoy the blog. Thanks for the kind and supportive words!
Regardless of the venue, you can see our Achilles Heel is still his running A Frame and to a lesser extent his self release on the contacts. I have to admit to some frustration, he is a very capable dog and I’m having a hard time communicating my A Frame criteria correctly to him (and sticking to it myself). At least now he is holding his start lines, so I can use a lead out when I need one.
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