NADAC Champs: Day 1

The big Abe Lincoln statue at the Fairgrounds

 

Time to start recapping our NADAC Championships experience!

 

This was my (& Porter's) 3rd time at Champs. Even though we brought home less ribbons than any time before (none!), it was by far our best showing yet :) And probably the most fun we've had at Champs ever.

 

A huge part of me wants to complain about a lot of things, but I think I'll save that for later... Let's start on a good note  :)

 

Our first run, Thursday morning:



 

 

We started out with a bang! A clear, qualifying run! We placed 13th out of 27 dogs in our division.

 

13th? Yes  :( 

 

We were entered in the 04-08 Vet/Junior Handler division. Since Porter is 8 years old (a veteran), he gets a height break & jumps 4" lower than his measured jump height. He also gets a height break because he is a corgi as well as another height break because I choose to run him in Skilled (similar to Preferred in AKC). So if you combined all these things, Porter would actually jump negative 4"  :) Since that isn't possible, he jumps 4".

 

But since there weren't enough other Veteran 4" dogs, we were combined with the 8" veteran dogs, as well as Junior Handlers whose dogs were jumping either 4 or 8". Not a big deal, until you realize that this means Porter is actually running against dogs that could be jumping 16" any other weekend. That's hard to compete against! So we were in a tough division  :)

 

When the results were emailed out that night, it said Porter would have placed 2nd in his normal division (if this had been any other weekend). Not too bad!

 

But back to the video... Porter nailed his weaves! And the distance challenge! It's kind of hard to see, but we had to stay behind the pink line when sending to the tunnel & then later to the dogwalk & following jump.

 

Round 2, later Thursday afternoon:

 

Not as good of a round  :)  We finished 22nd out of 27 dogs. And did not earn a Q.

 

Porter definitely started out much slower. Why? Because he spent the entire day barking at the people roofing the building next door. He absolutely hates nail guns. BARK BARK BARK...

 

And I kind of knew he wouldn't get the distance challenge in this course... Porter's weakness is sending out to hoops. But with the A-Frame adding some speed into them, I thought just maybe he could swing it. Nope  :)  Why didn't I work on that going into Champs??

 

And then the weave poles... Oh Porter...  :)

 

We stayed late to cheer on our friends & volunteer. We still had a great time!



 

Tomorrow we move on to Day 2!