Courses, New Jersey 9-12-09

Today was a great day in New Jersey. The weather was overcast and the ground was a bit wet due to rain the last few days, but the park grass held up nicely.

Attached is Excellent JWW & Novice JWW. The courses were slightly different as the club out here has all 5' bars for all of their jumps. My course was designed for 4' bars so things felt a little less roomy, although the spacing between the obstacles remained the same. Lucky for me, the actual ring size was 100 x 120 so there was plenty of room for all.

OK, starting with the Excellent JWW course. The majority of handlers setup their dogs so they were taking 1-3 as a straight line. Several dogs curled in toward the poles after #2 and earned a runout/refusal before jump #3.

Unfortunately, the off course jump by the weaves felt a bit closer to the poles than I would have liked, however only about 4 dogs took this as an option (not bad for over 250 dogs who ran this course).

Going up to jump #10, most handlers did a front cross so the dog was on their right as they sent them over #11 and simply called them back over jump #12. The line was incredibly smooth and very well handled by all.

The closing sequence began after #13, which required handlers to pause for a moment to allow for their dogs to come in to them so that they were looking at jump #14. Handlers who rushed this part were sure to get the off course jump. #14 - 18 was a very fast ending sequence and allowed the dogs to really run.

All in all, everyone did a great job and really made the course look easy. I especially want to compliment handlers on their wonderful weave entries. Nice job!

On to Novice JWW. Again, great weave poles! The largest challenge on this course was the off course tunnel option after #2. Many dogs had that tunnel in mind and regardless of what their handlers did, they were in the particle accelerator like a shot out of a cannon!

Of approximately 298 runs, there were a total of 117 Q's. Most from the Excellent B class.

Tomorrow is supposed to be sunny and I'll be judging Excellent & Novice Standard. More courses on Monday, once I get home ; )