More Course Analysis
Dylan is still sound and showing no signs of lameness or soreness. He’s stretching out fully when he gets up and I’ve checked for neck extension and curve (ie. holding a treat just to the left or right of his shoulders and then asking him to move his head only to get it). He will be going to a chiropractor … I’m just not sure when. There are none on our immediate area (ie. within an hour’s drive) that I’d be happy taking him to. I’m taking him to flyball on Saturday and I’ll see how he looks there.
Anyway, course discussions! I know most people find this super-boring but I just had to show you the Olympia Qualifier course from Wyre. This is the perfect example of something that looked so easy and really wasn’t. This was an Open 1-7 Combined course.
Firstly, the wall as jump 2 caught out a few of the inexperienced Grade 1/2 dogs. It also meant that the dogs couldn’t see the long line of jumps coming up. The long line caught out all the dogs without a wait or a go-on command, but also really revved up the speed of the fast dogs and a lot of them missed the turn at 7-8-9 as a result (or had poles down).
8-13 caused some real problems. You needed to cross somewhere between 8 and 10 to set up for the Aframe, and then possibly cross again depending on which side of the Aframe you needed to be on. I rear crossed behind Kim as she hit 10, but she has a long stride which carried her nicely out to 11. Some of the smaller dogs skipped through the gap or missed 10-11 out completely to head for the Aframe. Most people I think front-crossed between 9-10.
Most people just weren’t fast enough to stay on the right of the Aframe and push out over 13, unless you had really solid stop contacts. Plus, staying on the right meant 14 or 15 were big traps (14 was more obviously in front of the Aframe than on my course-plan from memory!) Equally though, the line of 9-12 meant it was really hard to get a smooth line to run on the left of the Aframe to pull over 13.
I rear-crossed behind the Aframe and Kim did a smooth pull over 13 but then we messed up at 14-15. I hadn’t spotted the dogwalk as a trap when I walked the course, but because I was behind Kim and didn’t get my weave command in early enough, she veered off for the contacts. By the time she’d realised what I wanted and adjusted her stride she’d passed the first pole of the weaves. We also got marked for missing the down Aframe contact which was a blatent lie; I saw Kim hit it with both back feet, and so did several spectators.
Anyway, back to boring course analysis. Loads of people couldn’t do right-hand weaves, but it was hard to find a smooth way to be on the left without getting in your dogs way (or pushing them onto the dogwalk). Natasha Wise (the winner) did a fantastic ketschker here, first time I’ve ever seen anyone actually use it in competition and it really worked. I still can’t work out how she did it so I don’t think I’ll be doing one for a while … !
We got E’d on 16-17 when I accidentally called Kim through the gap. I think that was a fairly unusual place to get E’d, although I did see a few dogs taking 16, then the back of 8 and into the tunnel again. Then straight-forward finish.
From what I remember of the results, there were around 20-25 clears, 20 with faults, and the rest were E’d. There were 79 in the class. Personally, those are the kind of numbers I’d want, as a judge. Half the class got around, and half of that made it round clean.
I’m such a course geek! But it really annoys me to see 5million pull-thrus in a 1-7 course because judges think that’s the only way to make it complicated. It was a bit of a speed course for some dogs, but Olympia is a speed Final essentially, and all the qualifiers go through to Semi-Finals anyway. This judge set nice courses all day, and used the wall and the brush fence. Thumbs up!