Remy jumping
I’ve been working for a very long time to put a MACH on Remy. For those who don’t know, a MACH is an AKC Agility title. It’s 20 double-Qs (qualifying in Excellent B Standard and Excellent B Jumpers on the same day) and 750 points (you get points based on how far under time you are in those classes when you qualify).
It hasn’t been easy, in part because I’m kind of lazy–or kind of busy!– and haven’t been willing/able to put in the time it takes to train my dog to a certain level. Also, in the last two years I moved from the Chicago area (where I lived for about 13 years) to Pittsburgh and then back to Columbus (my hometown) and hadn’t had consistent training/trialing. When I finally started taking more consistent instruction, one of my instructors told me “hey, Remy doesn’t really know how to LOOK for the weave entrance!”
Well. That was interesting. And she turned out to be right.
We have worked to change that over the last year or so, and it’s REALLY paid off. In 2006, I couldn’t even EARN double-Qs (because Remy and I were unable to finish his AXJ and get in to Excellent B Jumpers). In 2007, we earned 2 double-Qs. So far in 2008, we have earned 9 double-Qs–7 of which we’ve earned since September!
To me, this is nothing short of a miracle. 11 double-Qs. I occasionally worry because our speed is down, but this is at least partly to do with Remy’s worry over the weave poles (he does them at a good clip, but not as fast as he used to) and partly because I am being careful. At this point, I don’t care as much about speed as I do about getting some consistency–and that we have!–and his speed is plenty fast enough that I don’t have to worry about getting speed points.
On to the weekend in my next post!
