ASCA Agility Trial Belgium 2007 ** Australian Shepherd ** Kennel Diandra **

As we said in September last year, so we did this April. On Friday April 27 we set out for a long trip to a Belgium town called Laakdal. This time our number doubled both in case of the two-legged, and the four-legged participants. There were Ricky, Trey and Katie, this time also with Arya,and also Abbo and Grek with the owner Petra and also Emir. Emir had with him not only his owner Lucie, but also a numerous fan club consisting of Lucie’s mum Zdenka, who already in autumn regretted she had not gone with us, and Lucie’s boyfriend Jarda, who aside from being a fan club member also willingly and happily fulfilled not only the positions of a driver, but also helped a lot with the continuous moving of the crates and with other similarly necessary “little things”. Thank you, Jarda!!!!!

The happening took 4 days and this time the program included 3 Conformation Shows, 3 Agility Trials and 2 Obedience Trials.

On Saturday morning we got to our destination, which was the local dog school. We looked around and found out that agility will take place a bit father away from the conformation ring, which meant that it was necessary to build two camps and to be moving when necessary. This plan was slightly disturbed when we found out that although we did have 3 pavillons with us, we only had the 3 metal constructions and only one cover for them. Fortunately, the weather was too good to us, and we only needed the pavillon to protect us from the sun, not the rain

On Saturday from 8:00 a.m. agility was on and for the whole 3 days it was judged by ASCA Judge Richard Pittmann from the USA. Each Trial consisted of one Jumpers run, one Gamblers run and two Regular runs. Given that since the last happening in Germany we have Australian Shepherds in Europe that fulfilled the titles on the Novice and Open levels, this time the courses were built in all the higher levels. It was done the American way, from the highest level – Elite, then Open and the Novice always ran the last. Altogether I counted 47 Australian Shepherds in the catalogue and one crossbreed. Of course, not all of them competed the whole three days. The participation was international; aside from the home Belgians, there were competitors from Holland, Germany, Switzerland and our quite numerous group. The highest number of competitors took part in the Monday Regular Novice run; there were 34 of them, including the Veterans!!!

	Regular - 1. round	Regular - 2. round	Jumpers	Gambler
Ricky	Open - 2nd place - Q RS-O	Open - 1st place - Q	Elite - 2nd place - Q	Elite - 2nd place
Trey	Open - 6th place	Open - 2nd place	Elite - 3rd place - Q	Open - 2nd place
Katie	Novice - 11th place - 5Q	Novice - 14th place	Open - 1st place - Q JS-O	Open - 3rd place
Abbo	Novice - elim.	Novice - 9th place - Q	Novice - 2nd place - Q	Novice - 13th place
Emir	Novice - 4th place - Q	Novice - 3rd place - Q	Novice - 4th place - Q	Novice - 4th place - Q

An interesting thing was that the first day the highest number of participants were in the Regular Novice category, 29 total, and 4 of them were Veterans. The Veteran category runs the same course, only the jump bars are put 4 inches lower and they have 10% longer standard time. Seven year old and older dogs and handlers older than 60 can enter for veteran category.

At one o’clock the Conformation started. It was very tight, but thanks to the fact that the Conformation started with unofficial classes, we had just enough time to move and get ready. On Saturday about 110 Australian Shepherds were entered to the official classes. Glenda Stephenson (Sunswept Kennel), an ASCA Judge who is already quite well-known in Europe was in charge.

First it was Grek’s turn in the 12-18 month class. This class had the most participants from the whole Conformation (altogether 10), and my bad feeling about the age handicap (he was the youngest from the whole class) being too big came true. Grek did not placed.

On Saturday Obedience was also on the program, but we had no representative there.

In the morning we spent some time fixing the damage in our darlings’ looks that suffered during the trip and during the Saturday Trial. I hereby once again thank Petra who, as always, was the best one during the bathing, holding the dogs etc., and therefore helped me most of all. Thank you, Petra. :-)

On Sunday the Handling Clinic with Glenda was on the program, and from one o’clock there was again a Conformation Show, which was this time judged by „our“ agility judge, Richard Pitmann (Kennel HOF Sundown).

Grek – 12-18 month class unfortunately looked completely the same as on Saturday, and also ended the same way for Grek.

Ricky this time improved and in the Novice class achieved the 2nd place out of five dogs.

Arya had this time much greater competitions in the 12-18 month class (altogether 6 females). Despite this fact she achieved the 4th place.

Trey – Open Red class – she also had greater competition than on Saturday, and I was very happy for her 1st place among 5 females.

On Monday from 8:00 the Agility Trial was on and from 13:00 the Obedience Trial was on.

Here I would like to mention Abbo’s run in Jumpers Novice. Abbo with Petra had a very nice and fast run, unfortunately Abbo raised too soon at the start. For training reasons he was of course turned back. Unfortunately we did not know that the time is not set off at the moment when the dog is above the first obstacle, but at the level of the cone in front of it, where, unfortunately, Abbo stuck his head when he got up, so the timekeeping was set off and therefore the resulting time put him to the 14^th place.

Tuesday was a very hectic day because from 8:00 there were the Agility Taces and already at 10:00 the Conformation was starting. There were a bit fewer dogs at the Show than on the weekend, so the judging went a bit faster. The fact that I had to manage to groom and handle five dogs did not help much my agility run and even the information that the Show would be interrupted for a while so that I could run did not help either. During the 20 minutes when the Show was already on, I ran both the Regular Elite runs with Ricky and Trey, and I must admit that I gave up the run at the moment when we lost hope of qualifications points due to a mistake, that’s why so many disqualifications.

After the runs I quickly moved to the Show ring and promptly prepared Grek and Ricky who as always went in the classes following each other. Petra was again helping me, and I think that it reflected in her run, even though she ran only when Grek and Ricky were long gone from the Show Ring.

This time the Conformation was judged by an ASCA judge from the USA, Janet White (Kennel After All),who also judged both the Obedience Trials on the previous days.

Winning the class meant the return to the Winners Dog or Winners Bitch rings. Thanks to the fact that both Katie and Trey won their classes, Mirka had to, at least once at this happening, enter the Show Ring. I think they did well, even though I did not have much time to watch them because the judge evidently liked Trey and we were selected to the inner selection of 4 bitches, from which she chose the Winners Bitch. Unfortunately, this was where it ended.

One funny story from our return journey. On the way home we stopped somewhere, I think it was in Holland, in order to potty the dogs and let them drink. Our Ford Transit car full of crates with altogether seven dogs attracted the attention of not only the owners of the around parked cars, but unfortunately also of the passing by customs officers. For a while they stared at our car in disbelief and then they came to check our documents. While the girls were trying to explain to them in different languages that we were coming back from a dog show, they checked about 4 dog passports and the passports of their owners and concluded that was sufficient. I started to freak out about where I put the car documents, but to our surprise they did not ask for them.

I think that all the participants of tour trip enjoyed it and won’t take long to persuade them to go a similar happening in the future. Until then we have to concentrate our training on Gambler, because our dogs are not used to working long distance, and especially when there is an out of order obstacle between the dog and the dog handler

Gambler consists of two parts. In the first part there is a set time of 40 seconds, during which the handler leads the dog across the obstacles based on his own decision (he/she chooses the parcour himself/herself), and during this time they have to achieve the number of points set for the particular level. Each obstacle has its own point value and can be done max.2x in order to gain the necessary points. After the time limit is over, they have to manage the so called Gambler, which consists of 4 obstacles in a given sequence, and there is again a time period of 11-14 seconds set for it –depending on the level. In order for the dog to gain qualification points for the title, it has to of course manage both the parts. This way or similarly the run used to be and sometimes still is performed in our country. However, the point about Gambler, how it is run in the USA, is that the obstacles are behind the line, beyond which the handler must not go. The higher the level, the further the line from the obstacles, and also the more “additional” obstacles there are.

The last time in Germany we easily managed the Novice level, and the experienced Ricky even the Open level, and we only concentrated on not spoiling the dogs by tolerating incorrect crossing of the obstacles in the attempt to grab as many points as possible in the first part. But this time we found out that it is not so easy (honestly, Gambler Open and Gambler Elite seemed easier to me last time in Germany; it seemed to me that this judge literally enjoyed the fact that the Gambler remained unconquered, but I have to admit that I liked his ideas very much and that I promise that we will practice, so that next time we - the competitors will win ;-)).

So, I am sending my regards to all the participants of our trip and look forward to our next trip :-)

Katie and Arya in our “Show” camp (at the back there is the Show ring, and towards us there is the shorter part of it; you can compare its size to what you can usually see at our shows)

Last edited: 6.6.2007