I had decided I wasn't going to cover the USDAA Nationals this year. And had even wrote as much over on Agility Video Service. I wasn't even going to go to the event. But after I found out my friend Alicia Nicholas had made both the Steeplechase and Grand Prix Finals with her Border Collie Pickle I decided to go. I made it just in time to catch Steeplechase Finals Saturday night.

On Sunday afternoon I'm sitting in the stands enjoying the Grand Prix and shooting some personal video. When up comes one of the USDAA Board Members. It is kinda of hard to explain, on the one hand he is offering me advice about what I can do with my video, and on the other it had a threatening / intimidating tone to it.

This is something that I take no joy in writing about. But I feel it neccessary. I'm not picking on the judge, the point of the article is to suggest we need instant replay.

From the freeze play, it seems pretty certain that the winners of the 16" (Susan Garrett & Decaff) & 22" (Rhonda Carter & Blast) Grand Prix Finals both left the seesaw well before it hit the ground.

I will try to post results after each group runs through the day.

As of 3:40pm

there is a screen missing the top 22" dogs 

I interviewed a couple competitors and the two judges for Grand Prix semi finals. Listen to what they had to say about the course: (there is about a 7 second delay between the first 2 clips, I fell asleep)

Here are the course maps for Saturday November 4th, 2006.

Grand Prix Semi-finals 

Sarah & Sweep have an awesome run in the PNS finals and win the 16" height. Here is a short interview with her afterwards.

I believe a Golden Retriever named Abe won the 22" height, not sure about the others.

Here are the four course maps from Friday at USDAA Nationals, November 3, 2006.

Team Standard

The day is over. My girlfriend Alicia Nicholas with her Border Collie Pickle the Pirate won round 1 of the 22" Steeplechase. Here is the link to the agility video of the winning run. Also here is an interview with her about the run.

Here are more results:

22" results

We arrived about midnight last night and got up super early this morning. I'm not videoing this year, since USDAA is not allowing video vendor this year. I emailed them about helping out with some of the reporting, but I never heard anything back. Of course they are super busy with setting everything up.