Difficulty of AKC Invitational Courses

[Sharon]

AKC Invatationals

Funny. I'm doing exactly that.

If you want an agility dog that is confident and comfortable on the equipment and understands his job on each obstacle then you need to be more consistent and do your homework and not whine about it.It will come .

 

[k9kreationz]

If you want an agility dog that is confident and comfortable on the equipment and understands his job on each obstacle then you need to be more consistent and do your homework and not whine about it.It will come .

Where am I whining about it? And I would think I'm doing my homework by retraining all the things I missed early on. Sorry, I just don't agree with your view of my posts.

 

[Sharon]

AKC Invatationals

Where am I whining about it? And I would think I'm doing my homework by retraining all the things I missed early on. Sorry, I just don't agree with your view of my posts.

Oh well it is JMO and sorry you dont agree.I dont agree with anything you say such as Dirty MACHS, Easy courses, etc and that is my opinon and we are all entitled to them.I am not going to comment anymore because it is usless.

 

[ortegah]

Does no one train for this sort of thing? I'm curious because we trained for it. If I set Koji up, in front of 1, looking into the tunnel. As long as I'm facing that same direction, when I release him, he's supposed to go in that direction. Isn't that what you guys train? Take the obstacle in front of you no matter where I am unless I say otherwise?

There's no way I would stand past obstacle 2 and send the dog into the tunnel with his back to me. I've never seen anyone do that. If you can do that, please by all means show me a video of it. And besides, I'd never take my eyes off my dog.

I know this is going to come off badly and I apologize in advance. I said IF you take those out THEN what you have is an AVERAGE course (where I am). I did NOT say it's the same course and that makes it easy. Please don't take things out of context. When I wrote it, I was talking about what "average" courses look like in my area. And even if you left those jumps in....I still don't think it's super hard. 180s aren't difficult. They're basically a pinwheel and everyone has agreed that pinwheels are easy.

It's not a 180 that makes it difficult. It's the placement of them and the fact that there are two back to back and actually 3 180's if you consider that you have to come back around the first 180 a second time.

I've been competing for over 10 years. I've had a slow consistent dog and I've had a super fast crazy dog. I've seen the courses get exponentially harder over the years. I may not know it all about everything, but I think I've seen enough courses over the past 10 years to know what a difficult course looks like.

On another note, a Q is a Q and a MACH is a MACH and I'd be extremely offended if someone told me that my MACH was a "dirty MACH" or that my Q was a dirty Q. Just saying...

 

[k9kreationz]

There's no way I would stand past obstacle 2 and send the dog into the tunnel with his back to me. I've never seen anyone do that. If you can do that, please by all means show me a video of it. And besides, I'd never take my eyes off my dog.

wish i had videos of the people who did it. Maybe I can see if I can find theirs on youtube or something.

It's not a 180 that makes it difficult. It's the placement of them and the fact that there are two back to back and actually 3 180's if you consider that you have to come back around the first 180 a second time.

I've been competing for over 10 years. I've had a slow consistent dog and I've had a super fast crazy dog. I've seen the courses get exponentially harder over the years. I may not know it all about everything, but I think I've seen enough courses over the past 10 years to know what a difficult course looks like.

Then the course is difficult.....in your opinion.

On another note, a Q is a Q and a MACH is a MACH and I'd be extremely offended if someone told me that my MACH was a "dirty MACH" or that my Q was a dirty Q. Just saying...

I would be too. And I'm not the type of person that would EVER say that to you (or anyone). If this scenario happened, how would you feel.

ortegah: "augh, that was definitely a dirty Q"
Friend: "yeah it was, but who cares, its still a Q".

Do you know how many times I have heard that trials? I've never seen anyone get upset about it. I have had people come up to me and tell me that my run was a dirty Q. And usually, I know it was so I could careless what they say. Actually, I hate to say it, but I have learned to grow a very thick skin at AKC trials. People have been downright rude and mean about their comments when exiting the ring (and they aren't supportive nor helpful comments).

So, if you would find offense to the scenario above, I truly apologize and I will never say that to you.

 

[HopeShelties]

A q in and of itself may on occasion be less than pretty, but a whole MACH? NO. A whole MACH isn't 'dirty'... let alone one whole qq. I don't see people getting 2 qualifying gimme qs in one day. I find it highly insulting that you would consider the hard work any person put in to get there mach a dirty mach.
And no mach is bought. People still had to *earn* all 20 of those qqs, and 750 points. It doesn't matter how many trials you trial at. It doesn't matter if you've thrown $20,000 at it. You didn't buy it. On those days when the qqs and points were earned, something went right, and when it comes down to it, those qqs and points are the ones that count... not all of the nqs on the way to it. Though the nqs do serve a very important purpose- teaching us what we need to work on, and where the holes are in our training to give us the opportunity to improve and earn that mach.
Buying a mach insinuates things I have seen in the saddle seat horse show world... trainer X bribing trainer Y, or paying favors. That is buying a win. You can't buy qs. You have to get out there and do it the same way everyone else does. Running, training, and qualifying. Hard work. No amount of money can make a mach happen if the handler and dog aren't doing something right. You may not like a team that machs... You may not think they are great. However, they were great enough 20 times to earn the QQs. That is more than a lot of people can achieve. There are teams who will never earn a mach. Who can't for various reasons... whether that be the breed is harder to train/work, they're a bar knocker, the dog isn't consistent enough, the dog isn't fast enough, the handler doesn't trial enough (or possibly have the money to)... so on so forth.
If it were easy, everyone would have a MACH. I'd love to see the statistics showing the number of dogs who MACH'd out of the total number trialing. I'm pretty sure it's not even 25%. Any dog who machs has earned it. It isn't dirty. It isn't bought. It can ONLY be earned.

 

[Sharon]

AKC Invatationals

A q in and of itself may on occasion be less than pretty, but a whole MACH? NO. A whole MACH isn't 'dirty'... let alone one whole qq. I don't see people getting 2 qualifying gimme qs in one day. I find it highly insulting that you would consider the hard work any person put in to get there mach a dirty mach.
And no mach is bought. People still had to *earn* all 20 of those qqs, and 750 points. It doesn't matter how many trials you trial at. It doesn't matter if you've thrown $20,000 at it. You didn't buy it. On those days when the qqs and points were earned, something went right, and when it comes down to it, those qqs and points are the ones that count... not all of the nqs on the way to it. Though the nqs do serve a very important purpose- teaching us what we need to work on, and where the holes are in our training to give us the opportunity to improve and earn that mach.
Buying a mach insinuates things I have seen in the saddle seat horse show world... trainer X bribing trainer Y, or paying favors. That is buying a win. You can't buy qs. You have to get out there and do it the same way everyone else does. Running, training, and qualifying. Hard work. No amount of money can make a mach happen if the handler and dog aren't doing something right. You may not like a team that machs... You may not think they are great. However, they were great enough 20 times to earn the QQs. That is more than a lot of people can achieve. There are teams who will never earn a mach. Who can't for various reasons... whether that be the breed is harder to train/work, they're a bar knocker, the dog isn't consistent enough, the dog isn't fast enough, the handler doesn't trial enough (or possibly have the money to)... so on so forth.
If it were easy, everyone would have a MACH. I'd love to see the statistics showing the number of dogs who MACH'd out of the total number trialing. I'm pretty sure it's not even 25%. Any dog who machs has earned it. It isn't dirty. It isn't bought. It can ONLY be earned.

Thank You Stacey!!Very well said!!

 

[ortegah]

wish i had videos of the people who did it. Maybe I can see if I can find theirs on youtube or something.

Then the course is difficult.....in your opinion.

I would be too. And I'm not the type of person that would EVER say that to you (or anyone). If this scenario happened, how would you feel.

ortegah: "augh, that was definitely a dirty Q"
Friend: "yeah it was, but who cares, its still a Q".

Do you know how many times I have heard that trials? I've never seen anyone get upset about it. I have had people come up to me and tell me that my run was a dirty Q. And usually, I know it was so I could careless what they say. Actually, I hate to say it, but I have learned to grow a very thick skin at AKC trials. People have been downright rude and mean about their comments when exiting the ring (and they aren't supportive nor helpful comments).

So, if you would find offense to the scenario above, I truly apologize and I will never say that to you.

Even after the ugliest of runs, I've never had anyone be rude to me. Even some of the best handlers out there have said at worst "If you could get a little more control, he'd be an amazing dog!" which I still consider a compliment to him and an encouragement to me to work with him more.
If a person came up to me when I still had my adrenaline flowing and told me that my Q wasn't a good Q or I somehow didn't deserve it, I'd probably hurt someone.

 

[corbinam]

Even after the ugliest of runs, I've never had anyone be rude to me. Even some of the best handlers out there have said at worst "If you could get a little more control, he'd be an amazing dog!" which I still consider a compliment to him and an encouragement to me to work with him more.
If a person came up to me when I still had my adrenaline flowing and told me that my Q wasn't a good Q or I somehow didn't deserve it, I'd probably hurt someone.

I'm usually the one that says those things about my own run...like "that was ugly, but I'll take it". This is mostly true in starters where you can make a lot of mistakes and still qualify. In masters if it's ugly, it's usually an NQ.

 

[ortegah]

I'm usually the one that says those things about my own run...like "that was ugly, but I'll take it". This is mostly true in starters where you can make a lot of mistakes and still qualify. In masters if it's ugly, it's usually an NQ.

Oh yeah for sure! I know I've said, "Oh that was crazy but at least I Q'd!" but my Q is just as deserving as any other Q. We all have days that the agility gods shine down on us and some days where they don't