Shelby Earns Her First Agility Ribbons!

Well, since our major freestyle competition this year isn't until August, we've been taking a little time off from freestyle. To help keep us both learning, training, and working on our teamwork - we have been taking agility classes.

A couple weeks ago, Shelby and I travelled to Texas to compete in the TeaCup Dog Agility Association seminar and trial. This kind of interested me since all the equipment is to scale for small dogs - but what I also learned is the courses are to scale as well... which meant I didn't have twenty steps in between obstacles to "fix" things.

Surprisingly, Shelby measured to jump in the 8" class. She is just under 12" tall, so this was a nice surprise. I really like that this organization has the jump heights set so that dogs are never jumping higher than they are tall. I would think this would help limit the potential for injuries.

Anyway - we were mostly there just to learn and have a good time. Shelby's first run was really, really nice. Unfortunately, I didn't quite understand the rules and left the table too early. Apparently, you have to wait until the judge is FINISHED saying the word go. I left as she was just starting the "g" and not after she'd finished the "o".

Her second run was a little rough, but still very nice and we got a 3rd place and a Q.

She LOVED the games class. I wasn't too happy about the fact that we were running at 11:42pm (yep, 18 minutes before midnight!)... but she didn't seem to mind. The game was really fun - you had 45 seconds to do as many obstacles as possible. Each obstacle had a certain point value - you could double your points by going over the a-frame (one of Shelby's favorites)... We needed 40 points to Q and she ended up with 378! She also got a 1st place and a Q. Now if they only had a course that was all teeters - she'd be in heaven!

I was very, very happy with how well she did. We got lots of comments about how nicely she ran, and the fact that she "didn't even sniff once!".

We're looking forward to doing some more agility as time permits.