Friday, March 28, 2008

First Day Report!

The facilities here at this trial are great. The expo buildings have modern plumbing. There are 4 rings with clean, raked dirt. There is plenty of room for the crating of hundreds of dogs. There is a large area for walking the dogs. And then there is the Oklahoma wind. This morning it was in the forties according to the thermometer; but I have no idea at all what the wind chill factor was. For us poor citizens of California the wind was a biting cold. The locals laughed and said it was a gentle spring breeze. They said that if we wanted to know what wind in Oklahoma was really like, we should come back in January. Anyhoo, it seemed really cold to TeamWhitney.

Agilitywise, the day was toasty warm. Whitney had a really nice jumpers run with very tight turns and a good time. She ended up 7th in the 16 inch class as a result of that first run.

The standard run was another matter altogether. It was one of those deceptively simple runs. Sure, there were a few difficult parts; but what the heck. In actuality, the Q rate for the standard course must have been really low. That course was chock full of opportunities for error. In our case, we are really grateful that we had a clean run; but it was very scary. Near the end of the run, Whitney barrelled off towards an off-course obstacle. I was able to call her off it just in the nick of time. As a result, our total time was a little slow; but, given my pounding heart, we didn't care.

The culmination of today's runs is the state tournament where the best performing states compete. California ended the day as the top ranked state; and Whitney's times in her two clean runs qualified her as one of the 4 dogs to represent California in the state tournament. Unfortunately, Whitney had the only clean run on the California Team and so we ended up dead last. Whitney had fun though. That girl liked getting another run into her day. Poor California has never won the state tournament!

The final cumulative rankings of the day were not available when we left; and the web page right now just shows the results of rounds 1 and 2 separately.

Last year TeamWhitney opened much like this year: two clean runs and a clean run in the state tournament. Then in the opening run of the elimination rounds, the bogeyman of handler error suddenly reared its ugly head. We are very much hoping to avoid a repeat of that pattern tomorrow when the competition for the finals begins.

The competition is going to be very tough based on what we observed today. There are 18 border collies in the 16" class, some very fast shelties, and, of course, our friend Luka, a pyranees shepherd who won last year. TeamWhitney's strategy going forward will be to run clean without doing anything fancy. We will just rely on Whitney's natural speed. Sure there are dogs who are much faster than Whitney; but a reasonable percentage of them will probably crash and burn before the qualification rounds are over.

All in all, what a huge amount of fun!

3 comments:

Katie said...

Fabulous job today, TeamWhitney! Good luck tomorrow!

Katie and Touki

Channan said...

You did us proud today, Tom and Whitney! Way to go!!!

Anonymous said...

Go Team Whitney,

Dazzle and beat the competition with your serptentine prowess! We know you guys will do ACE dog sports proud!!!

Millie & Shasta