Agility Partners

SUMMARY: With whom have my dogs partnered most often?

I have a database and I'm not afraid to use it.

There are at least 4 reasons in my agility history for having partners (or teammates) in dog agility:

• Pairs Relay (USDAA regular titling class)
• DAM Team Relay (USDAA tournament, 3 dogs in championship, 2 in performance)
• Strategic Pairs (USDAA trials, a fun game that shows up from time to time for no credit)
• WAG's Turkey Trot (another for-fun game that they run every Thanksgiving weekend)

Among all my dogs, we've done 7 Turkey Trots, 8 Strategic Pairs, and 266 USDAA Pairs or Team Relays.

The person with whom I've partnered the most has been Carlene Chandler, 26 times.  That's twice with Boost and her Border Collie Quik, once with Boost and her B.C. Brenn, and 23 times with Tika and Brenn.

The next most common is Mary Van Wormer, 15 times.  That's once with Jake and her Australian Cattle Dog Skeeter,  four times with Tika and Skeeter (actually overlapping with Carlene and Brenn because we were doing DAM team together), and 10 times with Boost and Boost's littermate Bette.

Very close to this is Gwen Tatsuno, 14 times--although for no particular reason not recently.  That's 5 times with Tika and her Border-Newf Spike, twice with Remington and Spike, once jake with Spike's littermate Bruno, twice Boost with her B.C. Savanna, and 4 times Tika and Savanna.

Not far behind that is Karey Krauter, 12 times: Twice Jake and her Belgian Shepherd Zephyr, once she ran Remington while I ran Jake (that was a disaster),  once Remington with Zephyr, three times Remington with her Tervuren Inyo, four times Tika with her B.C. Bump, and once Tika and her B.C. Styx. So Boost has never teamed with her, and I've never teamed with her and her baby dog Dig--but Dig is just working her way into Masters.

Then there's a big drop and the numbers start to cluster:
Barbara Snarr, 7 times:  4  with her BC mix Jersey and 3 with her BC mix Sheila.
Jim Basic, 6 times: Twice with Mick, twice with swift, once each with Spy and Wicked. (all BCs)
Lisa Williams, 6 times: Four times with her BC Carson, twice with her BC Steamer.
Dave Grubel, 6 times: 5 with his BC Killy and once he ran another person's Aussie (Sandia).
Holly Newman, 6 times: 4 with her mixed-breed Jasmine and twice with her BC Zack.
Kathleen Alles, 6 times: once with her BC Maggie and 5 with her BC Annie.
Tracey Sirbello, 6 times: twice with her mix Zelda and  4 with her Malinois Maiya

And five times each: Lisa Williams, Sue Rush, Leslie Bickel, Pat Kaufman, Nancy Damarodas.

Then we're down into quite a few 4s, 3s, and lots of 2s and 1s.  But there are still many, many people I've never teamed with, even after all those teams I've been on.

So many of the names and partnership among *all* of those runs I can look back and and remember  how they went and how we ended up partnering! It's astonishing what the mind retains.