Mellie goes to the 2010 AKC National Agility Championship Trial

On March 23rd, Mellie and I headed to Tulsa, OK to attend our first AKC NAC trial. Our goals were to try to run at least a few clean runs and to stand up to the pressure of National level competition. We succeeded in both goals.

On Friday of the competition, it was the State Team tournament. All the Minnesota competitors scores and times were taken into account and compared to other states. Team Minnesota ended up 13th overall. Mellie ran clean in both of her runs. It was so fun.

On Saturday and Sunday, the exhibitors ran three courses-a Standard run, a Jumpers run and a Hybrid run. After these three runs, a combined score plus time is taken. The top 6 dogs go on to a final round. A few others are allowed into the challengers round to allow one more team to advance to the finals. We did not make the Finals round, nor the challengers round but we still had great success. Mellie ran all her runs clean, with no mistakes. In addition, she ended up 12th overall out of 97 dogs in her 8″ jump height. This is a tremendous showing. I was very pleased with Mellie’s runs. We need to work on speed, but she is so consistent now.

We were able to see many of the top handling teams in the country and the finals were exciting to watch. A tiny Toy Fox Terrier took the NAC title in the 8″ jump class. There were 32 Papillons in the competition and Mellie was the only Phalene.