Clean Run - February 2016 - 23

it very early on the course, as obstacle
#2. That allowed me to be in a position
to judge the up contact while still getting a bit of a head start on the down
contact position. Admittedly I am well
known for liking serpentines, so I opted
to put one in next, from #3 to #5. I made
the middle jump slightly offset in relation to the jumps on the ends, which I
felt would add a little more challenge. I
also hoped it would lead to more variation in how the sequence was handled.
Next was a wrap to the teeter at #6 with
a 90° turn off of it to the tire at #7, and
what I expected to be a fairly straightforward jump pinwheel (#8-#10) followed by another wrap to the weave
poles at #12. My placement of the #13
tunnel under the A-frame added a bit
of discrimination, both when the dogs
were starting the serpentine at jump
#3 and when they were exiting the
weave poles. In both cases, connection
between the dog and the handler was
needed to keep from getting a wide
turn at the least, or an off-course at the
worst. I followed the tunnel with a reverse of fiow to a 180 (#14 to #15) that

February 16 | Clean Run

led into the A-frame/tunnel discrimination at #16. For the last sequence I used
a closed approach for #17 jump after
the A-frame to add refusal potential,
and then continued the alternating angles with the chute at #18 and the last
two jumps.
That is how the course evolved in terms
of design. Of course, once the basic
concept was on paper, there was some
tweaking to make sure distances and
challenges were safe and appropriate,
and to ensure that I could stay out of
the handlers' way and get to all critical
areas for proper judging position.
So how did the course run? I was actually very pleased. Many different choices
and strategies were used throughout
the course, with no single obvious way
to handle it. This was highlighted in the
16" height group; even with a variety of
handling strategies the difference between 1st and 4th place was less than
a third of a second.
Jump #1 to the dogwalk at #2 did not
need any strategy, although, as is often
the case, the length of the lead-out var-

ied quite a bit (not always by the handler's
choice). As can happen when pushing
for speed, the down contact at the dogwalk incurred some faults and I believe
there was also one up contact faulted.
Then came the choice of how to handle the serpentine from #3 to #5. Many
handlers chose to keep their dogs on
their left through the entire serpentine
(blue path) as shown in Figure 2a, but
this led to problems with some dogs assuming a blind cross was in the works
as the handler hurried past the face of
jump #4. This in turn led to everything
from momentary time-wasting confusion to an off-course backside at #5. It
also caused a few very wide turns from
#3 to #4 (dashed orange path) since
some dogs felt the lack of connection
to the handler and took a hard look at
the A-frame. Handlers who opted to
keep their dogs on their left for the serpentine tended to turn their dogs to
the right at #5. Other handlers chose to
send the dog out to #3 while passing to
the far side of the serpentine as shown
in Figure 2b, either with a front cross or
a blind cross, and then did a front cross

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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Clean Run - February 2016