Course Analysis - Phili Area 4-26-2009

Many dogs were clearly dumbfounded by the intense weather that came out of the blue and tongues were hanging low and the pace was barely a trot.

Luckily, Excellent Standard (my largest class today), was first thing this morning and we started promptly at 7:45 a.m.

Teams rarely had problems with the beginning of the course (#1-4), although a couple of handlers gave a command early which made the dog's turn and go up the a-frame.  

The Open Standard course was similar and a few dogs turned on their own and went into the tunnel on the left.

Most handlers in this area chose to handle the majority of the courses utilizing rear crosses. Front crosses were pretty rare and almost non-existent on this course except after the dog walk. 

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Although Open JWW ran earlier in the day (the course was similar to yesterday's Excellent JWW - see yesterday's blog), the last course of the day was the Novice JWW.

It was about 1:30 in the afternoon when we started to run and the temperatures certainly hadn't gone down. By this time I smelled like I'd spent the day on the beach as the club nicely kept someone slathering me up with sunscreen at every possible moment possible.

The Novice class ran very well and like yesterday, they were an impressive group.

Several Novice dogs went straight into the tunnel after the #2 jump when handlers attempted to work this sequence on the left side (with the dog on their right). The other problem area was the #11 jump. If dogs came directly from the weaves and took the #10 jump at an angle (from right to left), they sometimes missed the #11 jump and ended up on the left side of that jump and incurred a runout.

As for some final notes about the weekend, the club did a terrific job and were very, very hospitable. They worked hard and it was a great weekend for everyone.