Spring 2006 Teamworks USDAA Trial Saturdays results.

The USDAA trial this weekend went well considering the weather. Saturday was cold and very wet. It rained the entire day and the grass field was very slick with mud. We had to put wood chips down, so it wouldn't be to muddy. I scratched one run, the snooker run, because it was so wet and rainy. It didn't help that the snooker course also had a set of weave poles in it.

I ran 3 runs on Saturday. The first run, which we ran as soon as we arrived was the gamblers run. The gamblers in USDAA is a little different than NADAC because it is it's own separate class, with 2 distinct parts. In the opening, you try to get as many points as you can by taking obstacles, contacts and weaves are worth more points because they take longer or are harder. The second part of the run is a distance challenge with a set of 4 or so obstacles that you must have the dog take with out the handler crossing a set distance line. Clover Q'ed on this run but was not happy because she was rushing the contacts. I want her to do a stay at the bottom of the contacts and not a running contact.


The next class that we competed in was the standard run. In the standard, she did very well but her weave poles were terrible I couldn't get her to go through more than a couple of poles with out her skipping some etc. Clover did do a stop at all the contacts however. I figured that she missed contacts in the first run because she was so hyped up and excited. I have always gotten her excited with the ball, but in this run, I didn't even let her know I had the ball until after the run. What I did was give her treats prior to the run. Food is suppose to calm a dog and in this case it certainly worked.


The last run we ran was a jumpers run. She did very well but missed the final jump. It was a triple jump. In USDAA the jumps seem very high. Clover measures 22 3/4 inches at the shoulder so has to jump 26 inch jumps, which seems very high to me.

Over all for the day. We received 2 first, a second, one Q and a scratch.