I’m back home again. Hazard had only three runs this morning and qualified in all three. I’ve been thinking back over the many years I’ve been playing this game. I’m pretty sure that I’ve never taken a dog into competition in the USDAA in a weekend and managed to qualify and place in every titling class. And that’s what Hazard did for me this weekend. She’s a good girl.

Following is the Novice standard course put up by judge Eric Quirouet. He’s a very nice fellow, a big bear of a man, and by all accounts an exhibitors’ judge who does his level best to make the game fun for his Novice and Advanced competitors.

The Course

This turned out to be a very tough course for Novice exhibitors. I managed to watch just about everyone. Of course in Novice you have to understand that there are a lot of folks who are genuinely Novice themselves. So you would expect that some of the handling will be kind of rough. But certainly we also had a share of more experienced handlers who are bringing up a new dog.

The Opening

The opening took its fair share of faults. If I’ve ever seen a course that doesn’t require a lead out… this one is it. It’s actually highly desirable for the dog to get ahead of the handler right off the bat; just line up through the first jump into the left side of the pipe tunnel and release the dog. So, why take a lead out? We’ve been conditioned that the handler should always lead out (I personally don’t subscribe; I’m just describing the state of our sport) and strike a ridiculous pose before starting the dog.

I made the observation several years ago that if a dog drops the first bar or runs around the first jump 95% of the time the handler is standing still, or facing the wrong direction, or both. We saw some pointlessly dropped bars at the first jump, and several dogs who managed to run around the first jump to bet into the pipe tunnel for an early wrong course.

In equal measure a number of handlers wanted to handle the turn to jump #3 rather than moving in that direction and showing the true path to the dog. I suppose they were concerned with a wrong course as the tunnel pointed rather back at jump #1. The result of this was that a number of dogs tucked back into the left side of the pipe tunnel as they followed the handlers’ wicked convolutions of handling.

The Designed Challenge

The next interesting bit on the course was the transition from the teeter to the table. A handler with dog-on-left can get into a bit of trouble here. The gratuitous dummy pipe tunnel under the dogwalk claimed a fair share of victims. The unexpected challenge was the wrong-course possibility at the A-frame. It is one of the Laws of a Dog in Motion that a dog ahead of the handler tends to curl back to the handler’s position. So if the handler is supervising the dismount of the teeter it’s an easy matter for a quick dog to get ahead of the handler over jump #7 and curl back for a very nice approach to the A-frame.

On the dismount of the teeter I ran forward for a Front Cross. This had my dog on right, blocking the approach to the pipe tunnel and making the curl favor the table rather than the A-frame.

The Unexpected Challenge

This sequence was a bit of surprise both the exhibitors and, I think, the judge. A number of dogs took a wrong course into the #2 pipe tunnel after jump #11. Mostly this was due to an error I call clutching; the handler wanting to get his dog reaches for him and actually applies pressure to keep the dog out. In the turn to the weave poles this error applied whether the handler wanted to keep dog-on-right or in setting up for a Front Cross into the weave poles.

With Hazard I drew a simple line to create a corner for a squaring Front Cross. She didn’t even think about the pipe tunnel.

One Last Cruel Twist

Out of the weave poles the dummy pipe tunnel under the dogwalk again took a few victims. I sweetened the path to the jump just a bit by applying modest pressure to the left, and then drew back to the jump where I used a static Post (putting on the brakes) to sell the turn to the A-frame.