Our First USDAA Nationals

Whew...what a week it was! Team "GET TO THE POINT!" left for KY on Tuesday and we got to the site about 7:30-8:00. They were getting ready to close up but we got our space staked out - Thanks Tracy!! And off to go find the hotel. It was right next to the complex and was very easy to get in an out of in the mornings.

The Nationals was pretty cool, this was the first time I'd been to USDAA Nationals. We have gone to AKC nationals 4 times, but just could never take the time off to go all the way to AZ. Of course my being "Unencumbered by work" made things easier this year too.



Cheetah did pretty well over the course of the Nationals, she ended up 8th in Team Snooker out of about 130 26" dogs. We had bye's in to both steeple chase AND GP, so it was neat to be able to know that you would be in the semi's and not have to worry about the quarter finals. Cheetah missed her second aframe contact in Steeplechase so, no finals there and in GP, we were clean, because I micromanaged her contacts, and we ended up 25th out of 60 in that round, but they only took 16 to the finals. I did get a cool shirt!!

Our team didn't do too bad considering we had to claw our way up from the bottom!
After Team Gamblers, we were 191 out of 206 teams. Sheli and I both missed our multipliers. I missed it by .02 seconds ARRRRGGGGHHHH!!!! She had two significant bobbles of which either one would have easily made up for it! I lost about 33 points on that to end up with only 22:(

Sheli got 20 and JoEllen and Point got 30 - they were more conservative after seeing us crash and burn.

Cheetah decided that yellow was not doing it for her in team std. and missed all three. To be fair it was more than likely due to the fact that she had torn her carpal pad lure coursing the day before. Yes, Cheetah discovered lure coursing and LOST HER MIND!!! by the second run, she was bipedal waiting for her turn, foaming at the mouth, with a wide tongue and every molecule in her being was quivering! I had to drag her away from it and didn't even let her do a 3 run for fear she would kill her self. She was very clever about on thing though. When Point went, he got so excited that he ran through the lattice that was supposed to stop him. I tried to stop Cheetah from doing the same thing, but she figured out exactly how to get the "bunny", she jumped the fence to get out around me and then jumped back in on the other side of the lattice and grabbed the lure.

It wasn't until I took her up to get a drink that I realized that she was bleeding. I then noticed that it was from her carpal pad. I think that bugged her during the rest of the runs. I did get permission to have vet wrap on it during her runs to keep debris and to prevent further scrapping of the pad.





After Team Standard, we climbed to 126th place - WOOHOO! Then after Snooker, we got all the way up to 65th place. But alas, Team Jumpers bumped us back down to 85th. Cheetah went passed a jump, but I fixed it, JoEllen and Point had a refusal in the weaves, but fixed it, and Sheli and Deva ended up with an E because Sheli ended up running the last line differently than she walked it and was pointed toward the wrong jump and Deva took it. They only took 36 teams to the relay, so we didn't get to do that. But all in all, it was a good experience and the competition was great. We had teams from Japan, China, Puerto Rico, Mexico and Canada. The Japanese teams had some amazing dogs!