Courses, Ashville, NC - 9/19/2009

As an overview, it was another incredible day in North Carolina. Great exhibitors, a wonderful club and an incredible BBQ dinner to top it off. Even more fun was all of the wonderful company, both judges, old friends and new friends as well!

I loved watching the dogs run my courses today and while I hate to sound like a broken record, the handlers really did a great job of working them.

My favorite course of the day was probably Excellent FAST. That's a bit of a surprise because I'm not a FAST fan. It's just my personal opinion, but the inconsistency in rules and the band-aid fixes over the last year have really turned me off on this class.

Even with all of the above said, I work hard to come up with unique Bonus challenges and try hard to put out a FAST course that makes handlers think by offering plenty of unique options. Today's fit the bill and I really enjoyed judging it. The Bonus had an option where one direction was worth more points than the other and the #10 obstacle was a two part obstacle that could be take in any direction. Again, lots of options out there and people were able to move around the course to get a ton of points.
My next favorite course was the Excellent JWW.

This was a fast course that offered up a few challenges that I'm not sure even I expected!

First, several dogs went running wide and went around the #3 jump. The main style of handling the opening sequence was either 1) by leading out, calling the dog over #1 & 2 with their left hand and then turning into the dog to present #3. Most dogs had trouble collecting for this option. 2) handlers did a front cross between #2 & 3.

In my opinion, the best place for a cross was at #4. Either as a rear cross or a front cross between #3 & #4.

The next challenge area was from #9 to #10. Surprisingly, the off course dummy jump called a handful of dogs. The other common error was that handlers were pulling up before #10 and the dog would curl into them and take the #11 jump backward. Overall, handlers smoked this course and were a ton of fun to watch as their speed increased throughout the course.

Last but not least was Excellent Standard. I liked how this course ran, but I wasn't able to watch the majority of the 20-24 & 26" dogs run it as a provisional judge stepped in to handle my overflow runs while I went off to do Jumpers.

The major issue the dogs I judged seemed to have was that they were leaving the descending side of the dog walk contact early to curl into the #3 tunnel. Of course this was at the prompting of their handler : )

As I mentioned, the courses today ran great...I'm officially off to bed. I'm so tired from all the fun! : )