Courses, Northern CA, June 14, 2009

Today was another great day judging in Northern, CA....Ah, except for the slight residuals from my Sake experience the evening before. As a part of this club's great hospitality, we went to a sushi place that had these really neat wooden boxes full of Sake, was really fun!

Back to the trial - we started today with Excellent JWW. This was originally a Standard course in it's prior life and with a few modifications and switching out of some obstacles, this course was reincarnated into this creation.

Most handlers were clearly worried about the #7 jump. Some handlers rushed to get in a front cross after the #4 tunnel and others leisurely waited, called their dogs in and then rear-crossed the #5 jump.

The biggest surprise was after the weave poles and down the line of jumps from #11 through #13, where the #12 jump had quite a few dropped bars. A few dogs took the off-course #1 jump and only 1 dog took the off course jump after the #15 triple.

Taking the double twice posed no problems for dogs and most handlers picked up the dogs on their right side at the #17 jump going into the closing. If handlers were late in their cue, dogs had to work hard to keep the #17 bar up and not run into their human partner.

On Excellent FAST, most dogs easily got this bonus (most folks do a lot of USDAA out here) and worked their way around the course easily.

As for Excellent Standard, this was Dan's course and as usual, I was in one ring judging while the course was being run and didn't get to see much of the action.

I did however, see his Q rate and it looked good, so the course must have run well!