Celebrating Our ISC Finals Win
18 Oct 2024
Here’s my handsome Snap! and me on the podium after the ISC finals with these amazing teams. Hard to believe he is 8.5 and we survived to win after watching 18 teams run after us. I’m still on cloud 9 that this happened. It wasn’t even in my wildest dreams.
The funny part was I was looking forward to leaving after we had our only clean run in Agility 3 in the morning! I figured I’d at least see what the course was and then how it was built. It really wasn’t a course that I thought would suit us; we benefit when the course is technical and doesn’t require really fast teams. There were a lot of teams with faster dogs and handlers; don’t get me wrong Snap! is quick, and especially at big events - he finds another gear.
Once the course was built I figured I might as well walk and run it. Heck, we’d qualified for it! A couple minor changes in the course as built and tweaked by the judge from the diagram turned out to help us. The tunnel was centered under the DW so it wasn’t a handler restriction if you ran it dog on right. The same tunnel was slightly rotated to face the off course jump just a little more than in the diagram.
During the walk it was pretty clear that I couldn’t run the tunnel to tunnel path and get the blind before the tunnel under the DW. Snap! is just too fast relative to me. But more importantly, if I did get the blind cross to get around the end of the DW he’d see me moving laterally just as he went into the tunnel. That lateral motion would turn him toward the front/off course side of the jump.
So I decided I had to trust our training and send him jump-tunnel-tunnel and run to support the threadle wrap as he came out of the tunnel. Snap! executed it perfectly! The cheer from the stands and watching him wrap was thrilling!
Then it was up to me not to rush his weaves so he’d see forward motion as he came out of the tunnel to make the back side jump obvious. Snap! does NOT like to wrap tightly on a slice from an extended line so I used every cue in the book to wrap before the long jump. Then I ended up slightly out of position as we came through the serp section and didn’t step forward enough to support the back side and earned a refusal. Then it was run like hell to finish the course.
Funny, as we left the ring I was kind of bummed out about my mishandling the back side. I was handed my leash and took Snap! up into the stands to commiserate with friends. There were another 18 dogs after us. A bunch ran and E’d or had faults. Sheyla hunted me down and told me I was supposed to be sitting in the “hot seat” as we were the leaders!! I had no idea!
So Snap! and I sat there and watched great team after team have E’s and multiple faults. Until there were no more teams. I was almost crying with happiness that my wonderful Snappy was going to stand on the top box at a big event after all these years competing. He’s amazing 💖❤️💓
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