SUMMARY: Just a few thoughts and bits of info.
- Blue merle collies! Many, many of them! Didn't used to see many of them at all. I like it!
- Mixed-breed dogs ("All American" or "All Canadian"--love how many show up in the finals, but only in the non-22" heights pretty much. For example, here are the breeds in Grand Prix championship finals:
- 12": 1 toy poodle, 1 mixed breed, 2 JRTs, 3 papillons (the top 3 dogs going in)
- 16": 2 min poodles, 8 shelties, 3 mixed breed, 1 pyrenean shepherd, 1 rat terrier, 1 border collie
- 22": 21 border collies, 1 kelpie, 2 australian shepherds (nice to not be quite *all* BCs)
- 26": 16 border collies (yeah, well, I spoke too soon)
- Ashley and Luka have heart-stopping runs, they push so much beyond any other competitors. Running like that, you either win (in Steeplechase) or have a fractional second of bad timing on the next to the last jump and end up with the fastest time but an E (grand prix), but none-the-less amazing to watch.
- Johann the Dog has done an awesome job of collecting all the podium finishers, maps, running lists, and everything else in one single page here. If it's not all updated quite yet, I'm sure it will be shortly.
- Boost had two littermates competing in Louisville: Littermate Gina won the Steeplechase quarterfinals; they are astonishingly fast with their full-speed running contacts! But unfortunately they eliminated in the semifinals. Boost's littermate Beck and her teammates made it to the Team final round. And Beck had a nice run, although a teammate was off course. Boost stayed home.
- I love watching the final rounds of pretty much everything. The peak of dog agility, over and over in every run!
- I think Dave Grubel did a great job as the G.P. finals judge--he was basically invisible, which I think is as it should be. The judge should always be well out of the way of the handler and dog, and of course their calls ideally would all be spot-on and noncontroversial, which seemed to be the case. Whew! Nice work, Bay Teamer!
I think that's all I have to say for today.
It was fun!!! I hope they stay here at least one more year...just to give us a chance to try if we can stay fit/well :) Thanks for the mention! We have tons of international readers and they love having everything in one place, not many of them are on FB, yet :)
ReplyDeleteAshley/Luka and Angie/Dylan/Duncan just have amazing runs, as does Daisy/Solar. We've run several times with Angie and Dylan, and got to meet Daisy at a Silvia Trkman seminar a couple of years ago when Solar was just a pup. So fun to see them run; and to see how far they've come.
I was happy to see a dog that Johann ran against at our recent trial got in the top 6 in Steeplechase Finals. Johann was within 1 sec of that pup...on his healthy run of the weekend. That was very exciting for us. :)
It's nice to be validated by seeing a dog that you compete equally against do well!
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