It was a llllloooonnnngggg day as the club was kind enough to host a RAD, now known as TTB (Time To Beat), Demo of the new AKC's upcoming class slated for some time next year. I'll talk about that class later.
The first course is Excellent JWW, which I had the pleasure of judging. From my point of view, it was a fun course to judge and moved along quickly.
The biggest surprise was the #16 jump. Dogs were moving with such speed, that some of the dogs went wide and missed this jump when handlers left too early and began running the last line of jumps
For a bit of excitement, I added the Dog Walk in. Most judges don't have it in FAST because it requires the judge to really have to be on their toes in deciphering where the handlers are headed and be in position to judge both ends of the Dog Walk as needed. Not always an easy task!
As for the Send Bonus, quite a few teams made this look easy. Most folks did the Bonus in the beginning and spent the remainder of their time collecting points.
The last course below is Dan's Excellent Standard course. As usual, since I was judging, I wasn't able to observe what was happening in that ring or where the challenges were.
This is my first time really looking at the course and on paper, it looks like fun!
OK, onto the TTB (formerly known as the RAD) class. First and foremost, the rules are being enhanced as we speak so anything written here could change and I suggest you keep an eye on the AKC website for the latest.
In summary, think of this class as Jumpers With Weaves with a contact obstacle AND that either the contact or the weaves will be taken twice.
The scoring and judging are a bit different and will be up on the AKC website very soon. In terms of judging, you cannot have an off-course, a missed contact or a knocked bar as those are automatic failures. Runouts and Refusals are not judged and you may attempt the contacts up to 3 times.
Also, there is only ONE course for all levels so Novice, Open and Excellent dogs all compete in the same height class against each other.
For the handlers, I heard a lot of positive comments and they really liked running it. From a judge's view point, I feel like a slacker out there since I'm not calling Runouts or Refusals!
Overall, I think it will be a fun class for everyone.
Love your courses! We did RAD at the Lost Coast trial and I can't wait till they introduce it. The dogs really enjoy a good ol' zippy exciting run and that's exactly what they got!!
ReplyDeleteI love it when there's a DW in FAST - I think a lot more people enter if there were a DW featured since some of us uhum... enter FAST for practice ... perhaps they can install a backup camera for the judges so you can see both ends?! ;-)