| Wed, 3 Aug 2005 Hi Beth Ann, Well, Kachina has really turned out to be something special! This past weekend was her second ever trial -- and actually the first trial she was only eligible to compete on Sunday as she turned 18 months on that day. At the trial this weekend she was a perfect 11 for 11 qualifying runs!! Including a weaver Q (my first ever -- Gizmo does not even have a weaver Q! You will see that there were 9 classes - but every other regular class, you can earn a gamble Q, which is how we got 11. Kachina tried for and was successful on getting the gamble Q (basically a double-Q run) in Regular Round 1 and Regular Round 3. The first column is "Gam Qual" and if there is a Q there, and if you earned a Q in the Regular Q column, you got a double Q. It is possible to earn the gamble Q without earning a regular Q - like if you get an off course during the regular run, but the "gamble" was clean then you get the gamble Q. The first gamble we did this weekend was a contact gamble, which was a jump and then the dog walk which was about 15 feet from the line, and then another jump. The tricky part is making sure you get the contact from that distance, because a lot of people are used to being close to their dogs when they train their contacts. The second gamble was a jumper's gamble with a discrimination, the direct path took the dog to the A frame, so you had handle it from behind the dog requiring a rear cross, which can draw a lot of dogs back over the line or to the wrong obstacle. Neither of my dogs had problems with that. Kachina is a great distance handler, in fact, the gamble was the first Q she ever earned back in June, where she didn't even get any of her standard runs because she was not 100% on her weavepoles at that time. Now she is. Anyway, enough about our little sweetheart. Thanks again, so much, for bringing her into our lives! Plan to come see her run at the NADAC National Championships in Moab UT in October 2006! I will keep you posted! Jeff |
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