Well, It’s a small world. I wound up sitting next to Becky Dean, former student and USDAA judge, on the flight from Columbus, OH to Atlanta. (It’s logical that one would go through Georgia to get from Ohio to New York, right?). We had a good chat, and I didn’t get much work done.

I have from the set of the floor crafted a game of FAST. Remember, I’m on a mission to prepare my students to be kick-butt players at this game.

The basic idea of the game is to score as many points as possible. Single jumps are worth 1 point and everything else is assigned a value from 2 through 10. These higher value obstacles can be performed only once during the run for points. Jumps may be repeated, but never back-to-back. Any back-to-back performance will result in the dog being whistled off the course.

The jump marked with the finish line is worth no points. It is the time stopper and when the dog performs it, his time stops and he can score no more points. Also, the dog will lose one point for every second over the standard course time. Part of the strategy must be for the handler to finish the run, stopping time while scoring as many points as possible, and losing as few as possible; (80 points are the maximum points possible, zero is the minimum).

The key to winning is to score more points than your opponents. It is possible to beat faster dogs than your own by plotting a more efficient path. That is the strategic side of the game that will differentiate players.

An 80 point maximum score is possible. That’s 60 points for all the obstacles with 20 points for the Send Bonus. Novice dogs require a minimum of 50 points to qualify; Open dogs a minimum of 55 points; and Excellent dogs a minimum 60 pts. Note that the points required to qualify include the send bonus. So qualifying isn’t a terribly challenging problem.

At the last AKC trial the I attended with my girl Hazard (a 10-3/4” Sheltie) she managed to NQ in all of the excellent classes (weave pole bobbles) but scored 80 points in FAST basically scoring in the top 1% of dogs. However, she earned her 80 points under the Novice SCT and would not have earned 80 under the Excellent SCT.

This is important to understand that if the dog cannot earn the entire 80 points then the plan should have the dog arriving at the finish obstacles with as many points as possible, without losing any. Also, the handler attempt the Send Challenge early or somewhere intermediate to the overall strategy so that the time whistle doesn’t sound while the dog is in the middle of the performance of the Challenge. That would negate the Send Bonus and preclude the possibility of a qualifying score.