3 day AKC trial, Walnut, CA

Went to a 3 day AKC trial last weekend. Enzo had a really awesome weekend. The first run of the weekend was a pretty tough JWW course. Tough if you have dogs that are faster than you anyway. It had two long straight lines that put the dogs straight towards an off course tunnel. I ran Tooney first and she actually faulted in the opening Lead out pivot where I turned a little soon and she decided to bypass the second jump and go into the tunnel which was the third obstacle. Partially my fault but she really should have known better too! Then she went right into the first tunnel option. Enzo was heading towards that same tunnel but he called off and ended up placing 1st! Standard was a pretty straightforward course. Tooney had a good run but leapt over the dogwalk contact. Enzo was clean and placed 2nd so Double Q! He's doing self-quick releases on the contacts but he seems to be pretty consistent about it so I'm just going to go with that for now.

Saturday's JWW was a pretty nice course with a couple tight spots. Tooney and Enzo both Q'd and Enzo got 3rd place. I was really proud of Enzo for actually collecting for some of the turns! He definitely seemed to be more thoughtful this weekend. Not running quite as fast as normal but I like that he's thinking about what he's doing a little more instead of blasting over everything. Once he gets a little more confident about collection, hopefully he'll learn to accelerate into and out of the turns a little better and also when to extend and when to collect his stride. I'll take slightly slower for now and if he can get the hang of it then his times will be way better than before.

Saturday's standard had a pretty nasty herky jerky ending. Both dog's Q'd and got doubles though. Enzo had a lot of wasted yardage at the end because he almost pulled off a jump when I decelerated too much before a tight rear cross and the rest of the run was me trying to just get through it all. He still got 2nd place though and Tooney got 3rd so they both got double Q's!

Sunday's jumpers was another kind of tough course with some really speedy sections into some tight turns but it was better than Friday's. Enzo ended up getting 1st and Tooney got 2nd!

Sunday's standard had a tough opening where you had to run through a box where they had to run past a tunnel on one side of them and the jump on the other side. Some people front crossed to get on the tunnel side to block but I decided to stay on the other side and pull since it was the inside of the curve. Tooney looked at the tunnel but called off. We ended up going off course to the dogwalk instead of the aframe which were next to each other. I did a front cross before the aframe and lost my bearings and ended up in front of the dogwalk. Enzo was awesome in the opening and drove right down the middle of the box at a speed that was a little frightening but he never looked at the off course opportunities. I decided to pull to the aframe with him instead of doing a front cross and that worked nicely. He ended getting called for a teeter flyoff though. I front crossed at the ended of the teeter and he growled at me and jumped off the side away from me. He did the exact same thing at the last trial too. Jeff thinks it's because he thinks I'm going to step on his feet. Jeff says that enzo growls and barks at him when he thinks Jeff is going to step on his feet and he's been doing that to get his to back away from the door. I guess I'll have to avoid doing that for a while until we can work through it. I'd better work on my rear crosses at contacts!

Anyways, with the two double Q's he got this weekend Enzo now has his 6 that he needs for AKC nationals. Tooney needs 3 more for nationals. I'm going to be doing a lot of AKC in the next several months so she should be able to do it.

I'm still considering trying for the invitational for next year with Enzo. I don't want to make a big deal out of it so I'm just going to do a lot of AKC for the rest of this year (except for USDAA regionals and Nationals and any frisbee weekends) and then see where we end up. If we're in good shape at the end of the year then I'll keep doing mainly AKC, if not then I'll go back to doing USDAA too. Enzo got 170 points towards the invitational this past weekend.