Making Myself Feel Better

SUMMARY: Lifetime Achievements, Top Tens.

I looked at the USDAA listing of Lifetime Qs (in Masters, P3, and Tournament), and got to thinking that only 130 dogs in the history of agility have ever earned more Qs than Tika has.

Of those, there are:

• 76  Border Collies
• 12  Australian Shepherds
• 9  mixed breeds--Tika's category
• 6  Shetland Sheepdogs
• 5  Jack Russell Terriers
• 4  Calling Birds...oh, wait, sorry, wrong meme
• 3  Rat Terriers
• 2 each  Cardigan Welsh Corgis, Australian Cattle Dogs, Golden Retrievers, and Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retrievers
• 1 each  American Foxhound, Toy Fox Terrier, Portuguese Water Dog, Whippet, Catahoula Leopard Dog, Pembroke Welsh Corgi, Belgian Malinois, Keeshond, English Shepherd, Labrador, and Pyrenean Shepherd

Of those 130, 18 are local Bay Area dogs. Of those 18, at least 7 are retired or deceased. Of the remaining, all except one (the Pyr Shep, and I'll bet you can guess who that is) are competing in Performance now, and some of those in only a couple of classes a day, just to give them something to do.

So I guess Tika hasn't done too badly in her agility career at all.  Not bad for a  dog who was turned into the shelter twice for being too hyper and then taken by Rescue because the shelter didn't want to try adopting her out to the general public another time.

Top Ten Silly Stuff

Just trying to remind myself that numbers can be so deceptive. And it all depends on which numbers you look at, anyway.O n the USDAA subscriber site, you can look at Top Ten by region and by breed! Oooh, a whole set of 3 more ways to pick the numbers you want! For example, let's feel better about Tika in Snooker:

Performance 22" Snooker rankings as of late November, Tika is:

• Overall: 12th
• In the Southwest Region: 5th
• Among Mixed Breeds: 2nd
• Among Mixed Breeds in the Southwest Region: 1st

Well, there ya go, we're number 1! That and $20 will buy us a Steeplechase entry.