At the North Star Herding Group Association agility trial on June 27 and 28 in Burnsville, Ace, Abby and Mellie had some impressive accomplishments.

Abby was only able to get into three runs for the week-end. On Saturday she started reverse sneezing at the start line for her Standard run. I had to pull her off course. She did not have any other runs that day. On Sunday, she was among the first group of dogs to run the Jumpers course in Exc. B. class. She showed them all how to do it. She had a super fast time and went on to take first place!! This was a large class of 8″ dogs, so I was very happy. Her Open Standard run was great with the exception of, yep, the teeter. This time, she refused it twice, but actually did do it (and very well) on the third try. Unfortunately, you only get two tries at it in Open, so no title yet. She was having fun though and the rest of the course was a piece of cake.

Ace had a fabulous Ex. A. Jumpers run on Sunday. Terry handled him beautifully and they managed a first place finish and he qualified for the second leg of his title. Saturday’s jumpers run was great as well, with just a pop out of the weaves that kept them from qualifying. Ace also had a few teeter issues, as well as a table issue which kept him from getting out of Novice Standard. Still, he showed great improvement.

Mellie was the star of the week-end. She ran four times and qualified in all of them. Good speed in the runs gave her two second place finishes on Saturday (with a 1.5 multiplier for the MACH pts) and two “fifth” place finishes on Sunday. (Abby beat Mellie’s time and pushed Mellie out of the ribbons!) Mellie earned two more Double Q’s and earned 62 MACH points!! She was really following my lead well and I think we are starting to really gel as a team. FINALLY!!

We have another round of trials in Burnsville in July and hope to continue to burn up those courses.

At the USDAA Agile Canines agility trial on June 20 and 21st in Burnsville, the Alasera gang had a great time. Abby, Ace and Mellie competed in the Starters/Performance I and Advanced levels in multiple classes. Abby and Ace finally overcame teeter fears and went on to have great qualifying runs in their standard courses. Snooker was a really fun games class and they all enjoyed racking up a lot of points in this strategy event. Mellie got her final qualifying run in Advanced Standard to earn her title. Ace got his last qualifying runs for Starters Snooker and Starters Jumpers to earn his first two USDAA titles. All the dogs earned nice placements, firsts and seconds in all the qualifying runs. They got nice pins for the titles earned at the trial as well as all the qualifyiing and placement ribbons. Ripley came along for the ride but did not compete as he is “back in training” for now. We will have to pick up some “distance” skills before we go too much further, as USDAA has a gamblers class which requires the dog to work away from the handler. So far, they prefer us fairly close to them on the course. All in all, they qualified in over 50% of their runs and showed some great confidence.