We just returned from the AKC Agility Nationals north of Columbus Ohio. Ohio is a lot more rural and beautiful than I had imagined. Its nice to see that some places are still green and not paved over yet. What an exciting event. First of all, this was a stand alone event unlike the one held in Tampa, FL that Katie and I had a miserable time at. This was held at a large equestrian arena on dirt and surrounded by lots of grass to potty walk your dogs on and decent parking. Check in was so painless and we were able to rent stalls so we took the whole gang with us this time. Anyways, Travis was awesome. On Friday, we did not qualify in either round of the state competition. We did not help Georgia at all. He ran very well, but it seems that I strong with finding a balance between sending him just enough. In this case, I pulled him off the jump in jumpers for fear of sending him over the wrong jump. In standard he simply missed the up dog walk contact.BUT on Saturday and Sunday, we ran clean all 3 rounds and he eneded up placing 11th out of 138 other 24" dogs. It was so amazing. I never dreamed he would really be that close to the top. The Nationals are held for great dogs that have earned the right to be there. So it was really great to place so high amongst them all. Unfortunately, he just missed going to the finals. It was a nail biter for awhile because he was actually in the top 8 (the # that goes to the finals), but by the end of the 24" class, he had dropped to 10th place. Final placement of 11th comes from the challenger class where a dog with a high placement, but only 2 clean runs, gets to try for another clean run and a chance at the finals. So the 1st place dog in that class gets to go to the finals too. Overall, he placed 27th, 22nd, and 25th in rounds 1 - 3. He was a crowd pleaser and got lots of cheering and compliments.
