Our AKC Invitational Experience

Here's a compilation of all of Enzo's runs for the weekend.



On Friday, we ran the FAST class which was for warmup only and didn't count for anything. They pretty much told us we could use our time to do whatever we wanted so I worked his contacts. He flew off the teeter the first time so I had him do it again and he was good the 2nd time. Then his aframe was close so I decided to keep going and then his dogwalk wasn't so great so I made him do that again too. I was hoping that would all sink in for him for the next days but really had no idea what he would do.

Saturday started out with standard. Luckily they were all turns off the contact so I didn't have to drive ahead on them. Enzo normally does better with me hanging back a little. He was quite amped for his run but his contacts ended up all being awesome. Unfortunately I called "come!" right over the panel before the weaves and that ended up coming down. I was kicking myself for that for a while but I'm over it now :-) Enzo was really fast and had some tight turns. He ended up having the fastest time of the 16" dogs but had the fault.

Round 2 was JWW, pretty tough course with some box work which used to be a huge weakness of ours but I finally figured out how to handle him through boxes. He was flying through this run and I almost lost him to a couple off courses but we made it and ended up winning! The andrenaline was really pumping after this run and my hands were shaking so much that I had trouble buckling his harness!

Sunday was a horribly early day. We had to be there by 5:45 for the general walkthrough and our ring started running at 7. I was not really awake for my runs. First run was JWW. Not a horrible course. Everyone's biggest concern was the turn over the broadjump. Funny thing is that I never saw any dogs have issues with it. I lost enzo right at the beginning to the weave poles. I should have held up there for a moment but I never thought the weaves would have been that much of a draw. Watching the video, I'd say that my motion getting around that winged jump pushed him out there. The we had a bar down where I got in his way on the serpentine and I pulled him off the jump in the corner which you can't see in the video.

Then our last run was the Hybrid round. He didn't hold his startline for as on as I wanted and I was late on the front cross and ended up flinging him out towards the weaves again! I should have rear crossed there. So after that I just thought oh well lets just run fast! He nailed his aframe contact but flew off the teeter and took an off course jump.

I was really happy with how Enzo was running all weekend. He found some extra speed that I wasn't totally prepared for but he was really fun to run. Having to line up in the chute for 5 or 6 dogs ahead was a little tough since he focused on the course so early but he was really good about the dogs being close to him. He's such a good boy and tries really hard. I really hope that we can make it to AKC Nationals next year but we'll see.

Here's our 1st place JWW run again just because: