Beth Canner, our BCCA Agility Chair and AKC Judge, Reports from the Nationals
10/23/97
Now...on to telling the BAD readers about the Nationals:
PROUD is the buzz word. I was PROUD to be a BAD member and very PROUD of the Beardies and Handlers. They did an exceptional job under a lot of pressure. And I brag about our Beardies to Sharon Anderson the AKC Field Rep all the time....so she made a point of mentioning them to me. I am only sorry that I did not get a photo of the handlers with her.
Maybe next time.
For those of you who don't know......JUST GETTING TO THE AKC NATIONALS IS A DIFFICULT TASK. And 3 Beardies were there this year!! ONE last year and three this year....WOW!!!
Charles ran very well with Mikie. The courses were pretty smooth and flowing. Antoinette handles Tasha expertly, they work as a team, together, as agility is meant to be run. Jerry and Breezy were a joy to watch also, she watches him for direction rarely taking her eyes off of him.
Overall the Beardies ran well and were reliable. Unfortunately the times for the courses this year did not make allowances for the pause table. Usually the 5 seconds is added to the SCT. This made a big difference to all dogs running and not just the Beardies.
The Championship class consisted of 3 standard Excellent level courses and one excellent level jumps with weaves course under two different judges. Christine Meihle and Lisa Layton were the judges. Two courses were run each day.
The AKC Excellent rules applied except:
Standard infractions that would normally be an elimination were scored as an18 point deduction.
Wrong courses were an 18 point deduction. All obstacles had to be completed or a zero would be scored. In the fourth round the highest scoring dogs, using cumlative scores through the previous 3 rounds were separated from the standard running order and were run at the end of the class.
DOGS ELIGIBLE TO ENTER THE CHAMPIONSHIP CLASSES: Dogs which have the AKC Agility Excellent Title, with 3 perfect excellent rounds from 11/28/96 through 9/8/97. Preference was given to highest titles of MX, then AX with MX legs , and so on. An MX title is similar to an obedience UDX in the fact that after obtaining the AX (excellent title) you can earn an MX (master agility) by then earning 10 more qualifying legs.
So as you can see.....these Beardies and their handlers worked very hard to even earn the right to enter, much less make the cut and participate.
It seemed to me that ALL dogs seemed to lose the most time in two important places......the dreaded weave poles and the pause table. Most dogs with perfect runs otherwise lost time by slow poles and slow to sit or down on the table.
Rick worked as scribe so he really did not get to see much of the actual runs. I worked as timer so I could watch almost everything.
More later ,
Beth
