Recapping Archie's Second Novice Standard Q

What I didn't mention in my post yesterday is that I was sure that Archie did not qualify in his Novice Standard run on Sunday, so I didn't check the scores before I left. I only found out that he earned that second Q when I got the results email from the trial secretary last night. Not only did he Q, he only made one fault, an off-course.

I thought it would be amusing to put up an image of the actual path that Archie ran to give an example of how crazy it is to handle easily distracted, high-as-a-kite baby dogs. I made the image below as an exercise to figure out how he managed to Q.

The obstacles are numbered on the side the dog needs to approach them. Obstacle 8 is the broad jump, which you'll recall I mocked up at home with a shipping pallet (worked brilliantly, Archie had no problem with them all weekend). Obstacle 10 is the teeter, and 13 is the tire.

We started out with an arc to jump 1 as I mentioned yesterday since he refused to sit. His weaves were perfection and he had a nice stopped contact at the end of the Aframe. I did a front cross while he was descending the Aframe to position myself for the loop from 5 to 9. However, when I released him, he ran not to jump 5 but to the table (red line). He jumped on the table, off it, went around it, zoomed off to the corner. I managed to get him back to me without him taking any other obstacles (a minor miracle), and somehow, I don't know how, I got him back on track to jump 5. Even with all of that craziness, he only got one fault, an off-course at the table when he jumped on it after the Aframe. He never crossed the refusal plane of jump 5 while he was running around, another miracle.

We finished the rest of the course without incident and had a big happy party at the end--even though I thought he had not qualified, it is important to always have a party so the dog leaves happy. He in fact ran the entire path (red plus white) 5 seconds below course time. Speed is not Archie's problem.