Taj MuttHall Dog Diary: Some Interesting Data

(OK, at least it's interesting for ME.)

Jake's USDAA Standard Qs: After moving to P3 (that's the Performance often used for Veterans equivalent of Masters), over a period of 13 months from Feb '03 to Feb '04, Jake earned 15 Qs out of 23 attempts. Then, with no gradual fading away, just a sudden plummet, he earned 0 out of the next 17 over the next 7 months. 8 were off courses, I'm guessing largely an effect of him not being able to hear me, 5 had at least a few time faults (compared to 0 in the preceding 3 years) which I also largely attribute to not hearing me and making long run-outs that ate up the time, and the rest just random faults but I suspect several are dogwalk pops.

I compare Jake's yards per seconds in his CPE Jumpers classes from Feb '02 thru last month, and it really hasn't changed at all! Which surprises me, especially considering how many runouts we end up with. So has he been getting FASTER? He seems slower than he used to be, but maybe that's just in comparison to Tika. :-/ Although I'd say the YPS are more variable than they used to be. I didn't start tracking course yardage until 2000, and then only sporadically until 2002, so I don't really have early data for him. What I do have for CPE Jumpers:
In 2002, 3 runs, ranging from 4.47 to 5.10 yps.
In 2003, 4 runs, from 4.62 to 4.77
In 2004, 6 runs, from 3.88 to 4.96
In 2005, 7 runs, from 3.95 to 4.63
In 2006, 5 runs, from 3.85 to 4.94

OK, here are Tika's Jumpers statistics: Out of 29 Jumpers runs ever in CPE, only 7 have been completely clean (no bars down, for example); in 51 USDAA Jumpers runs, only 6 have ever been completely clean.

This is not a good percentage.

Here's the difference between Tika's USDAA and CPE qualifying percentages (note that, in USDAA, you always have to have clean runs for the regular classes to Q; in CPE you're allowed faults until you get to the champion level):

Class	CPE over all	CPE Ch level	USDAA
Colors	64	100	n/a
Full House	95	100	n/a
Gamblers	71	67	21
Jumpers	52	40	18
Snooker	52	73	39
Standard	63	41	16
Wildcard	72	87	n/a
Pairs Relay	n/a	n/a	46