Agility - How many venues do YOU compete in?

KarissaKS

I'm very much an all or nothing person, it would seem...

Oh I hear ya!  For me it's just dog stuff in general.  Last spring Kenya titled/certified in rally, agility, herding, temperament, and TDI each a weekend apart one after the other.  Just a 5 week stretch for that but it felt nuts!  All the training and prep between each weekend for a different type of test/trial.  I swore I'd never do it again and only do 1-2 show/trial weekends each month but now of course I've already got BOTH GSDs entered in a ton of stuff from now until July.  It's so addicting!  Someone cut me off....

KarissaKS

Tashakota -- Do you really find it to be that big of a problem running two dogs?  I've been to several two-ring NADAC trials and they are very good about handling ring conflicts.  At the beginning of the day they always state which ring takes precidence and if you have a conflict they have no problem going back to a jump height/running out of order/letting you do a walk-through out of order.

I expect to find this out first hand in July.  Kaiser's first NADAC trial is a big two-ring event, so I'll be faced with the issue of Novice starting in one ring in the a.m. and Elite running in the other!  Thankfully Kaiser runs with small dogs and Luke runs with the big dogs, so that will help the timing issue slightly!

It depends on the dogs.  For my dogs, I don't feel like I can take them back to their crates, stick them in and then grab the next dog to run, which I did when I first started trialing.  My dogs need a little more wind down time before being put back into crates.  I have a friend that runs 2 dogs in everything and she runs her dog, goes back to the crate, sticks them in, gives them a treat and gets ready for the next run.

I think it also depends on the person.  I see many people trying to run 2 or 3 dogs in the same jump height at the same level and they have to make sure that they have some dogs in between their own, as well as catch their breath in between.  Many of these people that I see, do not run their dogs all that well either.  More experienced people seem to have less problems so it just depends on the people.

I know that I did not like running Kota and Tasha in the same classes.  I felt overwhelmed kind of, but I had also just started trialing.  Since you've already been trialing with Luke, it will be different for you.  Kota is in Masters now and Tasha is still in Starters, so that makes a big difference.  But with 2 ring shows, at least around here, the Masters levels are in ring 2 and the Starters, Advanced are in ring 1.  So you may end up with 2 dogs running at the same time.  That's two walk throughs, 2 different courses to memorize, plus running from one ring to the other trying to make sure that you aren't missing your turn.  If there are conflicts, they try really hard to work both in, but I have seen instances where a handler has to run one dog in ring 2 and then as soon as they are done, run to get their other dog to run in ring 1.  That is not a situation I would personally want to find myself in.

 Geez! I'm kind of glad, looking at this, that I don't have an agility dog. I spend $150 ish per weekend, for both dogs, for rally. Emma's working on her RAE, and Ena's working on her RN. Em's RAE is looking more like a  $1000+ title, as many times as we've NQ'd. Oh, well. There's nothing else to show her in, at most shows. She enjoys it, and so do I, so we do it.