I came up in the agility world in Arizona. Back in those days I was very close to California, because everyone who played agility seriously had about a thousand mile traveling radius just to get in over a half dozen trials a year. So it was a special delight to be to renew acquaintances and see all the folks who’ve come up so strongly during my absence.

I fought very hard to hold on to my simple looking Masters course with my course reviewer, Scott Chamberlain. He argued properly and correctly that it was probably too simple. While I argued on the other hand that I am a designer of some subtlety and simplicity. I want to lull the handler into a sense of false security and challenge the dog with subtle riddles while working at full speed.

Scott really wanted me to change the opening to make it a technical handling challenge. Something rather like this:

Yes… that really changes the whole opening. Rather than a simple three jumps—pretty much in a line—the handler has to torture through a serpentine opening. What I told Scott is this… I’m testing for the errors of a static lead-out. The innocuous seeming opening that I’ve offered on the course tests the simple proposition that if a dog dumps any opening bar between the start-line and the handler’s release position, 95% of the time the handler is standing still or facing the wrong direction. Scott relented on his point, and I put up the course as designed.

And sure enough the opening itself took about a 25% NQ rate. I’m fairly certain it would have been less than half of that with Scott’s more technical opening mostly because the handler would have been in action in the fray with more technical and meaningful movement.

The most common error in the opening was a dropped bar at #3 because the handler, having taken a long lead-out now has nothing productive to do but distract the dog with a cue to turn when the dog really should be concentrating on jumping the jump. There’s really enough time to turn after jumping the jump. And if you are standing still you can’t really pre-cue the turn with a change of speeds because putting on the brakes in a car that’s already parked doesn’t have much significance as a pre-cue, or even a cue, as far as that goes.

The central challenge, or obvious challenge, was this bit here. It took a share of faults as the central challenge probably should, though it turned out to be less onerous than the opening. The most common fault was a dropped bar or refusal at jump #5 and most because the handler used a Back Cross, approaching the jump with dog on left and then crossing behind the dog at the moment of truth. My own instinct would have been to approach the A-frame with dog-on-right, using the opening for this simple position and consequently removing the risks associated with a common Back Cross.

Secondarily this technical sequence earned a number of faults as the handler coming off a landing-side Front Cross after jump #6 came out of the Cross disoriented and OOP, perhaps flinging the dog up the A-Frame.

It didn’t help that Scott’s Grand Prix course running in the adjacent ring had a stereo sequence coming off the A-frame in which the dog was to go to the jump to the right after the A-frame rather than the jump to the left. Of course we called on our Masters handlers to walk both courses and hold them in mind before running them in near time order. But that only added to the delicious drama of the day.

The next rather interesting moment in the course was the turn to the dogwalk after jump #14. I was especially interested here in how many handlers would layer to the opposite side of the table while the dog jumped away for an approach to the dogwalk. As it turned out handlers who layered had a high wrong-course-to-the-table fault problem. Mostly, I believe, the dog tucked up to the table because the handler wasn’t moving well which as a consequence draws the dog to the handler’s position.

Meanwhile those who drove around the table tended to push their dogs out into wide turns just from the pressure of the handler’s movement. If you think about it a bulge in the dog’s path isn’t really faulted where a wrong-course to the table is like the death penalty. On the other hand those who layered to the opposite side of the table snugged the dog’s path up neatly saving a second or two, and placed higher in the class accordingly.

My intentional challenge for the closing was to direct the dog correctly after jump #17. I was a bit surprised my many dogs big the wrong-course jump at #19 after jump #17. Mostly they were surprised that the dog took the wrong-course even though it’s clear that the dog’s path favored working on to that jump. If your really think about it, after jump #17 there are three possible conclusions, only one of which is correct. It is a fact that a share of dogs tucked up into the wrong side of the pipe tunnel.

What do it mean?

I think that as a course designer I’m now fascinated with courses that are simple on the face of things but subtly challenging to all and doubly challenging to the unwary. To be sure I do not relish the NQ. The qualifying rate on the course was right around 36%. This isn’t terribly high; and it isn’t terribly low.

If I continue to study the efficacy of the handler’s lead-out I expect that the qualifying rate won’t be as high as it could be. We live in an era in which the handler doesn’t understand the risk associated with moving badly. And there is no place I can test it more surely and quickly than at the beginning of a course. I truly expect to have arguments aplenty with my course reviewers as they mightn’t recognize that “simple” is a challenge equal to “technical” on almost any day of play.