World Team Tryouts!

http://www.akc.org/events/agility/world/2011/tryouts_saturday.cfm
http://www.akc.org/events/agility/world/2011/tryouts_sunday.cfm

These are the links to the courses used at the tryouts.  I only saw courses 3-7 on Sat. and course 13 on Sun.  It was a lot to take in and a lot of fun to watch.  Most handling strategies I saw were pretty similar but there were a few that stood out as really good and a couple not so good.

The first round we watched was medium dogs (jumping 16") STD course 3.  Most of the group had a hard time with this one.  Saw lots of dropped bars on the offset 3rd jump of a serpentine, the angle was sharp and not every handler accounted for that.  When handlers tried to get their dog around the backside of jump 5 a lot of the dogs ran straight ahead to an off course tunnel.  That tunnel sucked in so many dogs, I'm surprised anyone qualified!  The weave entry after that was really tough too and half those that survived the off course tunnel couldn't get the weave entry!  It looked like a good number of the dogs just about flew off the teeter, nothing was called though.  Handlers that used a front cross after the teeter kept their dogs under control and handled the next sequence much better with a sharper turn after the next jump.  (That reminds me of Thursday's class, don't use something fancy, like a rear cross, when another move is so much more effecient/effective.)  Things learned from this course: work on all sorts of serpentine set ups, good weave entries are essential, and being able to call a dog off an obstacle is always handy.

Courses 4 and 5 for small (jumping 12") and medium dogs were exactly the same.  Here was another tricky weave entry and I didn't like the way most of the handlers tried to accomplish it.  While it worked for some, many dogs missed the entry.  I saw it done 3 ways: doing a post turn around the standard further away from the weaves, wrapping the standard closer to the weaves with some variety of front cross, and wrapping the standard further away from the weaves then rear crossing the weaves.  The post turn makes for an easy weave entry but it's slow and many of the dogs had rather wide turns.  The second option is a much quicker turn but the weave entry is very tricky.  The last option seemed to work the best, but very few of the handlers used it.  The wrap makes for a tight turn and since the turn is away from the weaves, the weave entry is a little easier.  Just goes to show, you gotta look at all the options and not pay attention to what everyone else is doing (I learned that at our last trial.)

Ok, it's really hot in our apartment so I will continue this tomorrow.  Off to try to cool down!  Happy agility!