AKC Agility National Championship, Perry GA March 2017

We came to the show because it was on home turf.  Not our real home, but part of me never left Georgia.  This is the reason that every April we go down to the agility show in Perry, Ga.  We go mainly to see old friends, have everyone over for a cookout a the RV and catch up, allowing myself to feel like I did in the old days, when I felt most alive in my life.

This year will be an anomaly, our first to miss the April Perry show in 10 years.  We can’t justify the long trip and time off work 2 months in a row.  

Another compelling reason to go is that the Nationals aren’t usually so close to home.  The only other time we entered the show, despite qualifying every year we were eligible, was the Harrisonburg, PA Nationals in 2014.

Ironically, I wasn’t looking that forward to Nationals.  I’ve always set my agility vision on the Invitational, hoping to make the finals, hoping to take home a placement trophy. The Nationals is the most competitive event.  Unlike the Westminster or the Invitational, there are not special entry guidelines for a diversity of breeds in the finals.  If you want to be in the finals, then there is no choice but to beat out the fast and consistent dogs, which in my 24inch height class means all the border collies.  So considering I was just coming off the 3^rd place win at Westminster, I thought why put any more pressure on myself. 

At Nationals, to make finals, you have to run 3 clear rounds and be fast enough to make it.  This event is in its 21st year and in the past there have been Ridgebacks who have run all 3 clear rounds.  But none have been fast enough to make the finals. That is, until this year. 

We started with a hard Jumpers run on Saturday.  It was a very tight course and a lot of management.  But we ran clean and only lost about a second to our normal running times on those type of courses. 

What we lost, he made up for in the Standard run later that day.  The only time my heart lept from my chest was when Braddock jumped out of the ring at the end of the clean round, and lucky for me the judge didn’t call it.  We could have lost the run over it. 

And finally, on the third round, I was really starting to get nervous.  I was sitting in 7^th and the top 10 were going to finals. 

I knew my speed was enough to get me in, so I just needed to run clean.  But the course was wide open.  And Holy Ridgeback, we did it! 

We ended up ranked #4 going into the finals.  It was a first for Ridgebacks and he was the highest ranking non border collie going in.

Now, there is no way to describe how excited I was but also nervous because I wanted to translate this opportunity into the successful vision I had always dreamed about – to leave with a placement trophy.  All these years I had limited my eye on the Invitational never considering this possibility.  But the nerves got to me.  I saw handler team one right after the other get an off course on the round and so I changed my plan last minute, never walking the path I was deciding to run.  Sadly, my original path  likely would have worked, as I had more time to get in position that I thought.  And the new path left me farther behind on a section where Braddock accelerated and took an off course tunnel. 

While we accomplished a feat others had only dreamt of, to make the finals, the competitor in me always wants more.  And yet, what I need to keep in mind is that in the last 2 months I have run 2 major events and made the finals in both of them.  We even placed 3^rd in one of them.  We would have placed 3^rd here.  So I can safely say, I have the top 3^rd consistent/fast dog in the 24inch class among the current competitors in the country, and that is enough for me.