Perfect Weekends History and Full House

SUMMARY: Hmm, I *have* had perfect weekends before. But not this perfect, and no awards for them.

I double-checked my records, and Remington in fact got 8 out of 8 in a CPE trial two months before he was first visibly sick from cancer. But, back then, they were giving High In Trial awards, not Perfect Weekend awards, he was only 2nd high in trial, so I felt more like a loser than a winner. (And only 3 of those 8 were firsts.)

Then Tika got 6 out of 6 at a CPE trial in February '03 at her second-ever trial of any kind...all at Level 1, which has no weave poles or teeters and are pretty basic courses. Two of the runs had 5 faults. And only 5 of the 6 were firsts. :-) But, true to Tika form, even then she had the most points in Full House of all 126 dogs entered, and the fastest time of all 75 dogs who ran the same Jumpers course.

I *like* doing Full House with my fast dogs! It's essentially a Gambler's point-accumulation period with no gamble. In other words, there are no faults, and you can make your own course from start to finish. So fast dogs who can do contacts and weaves can have an absolute ball.

In the 29 Full Houses that Tika has entered (and that I bothered making notes about), she's been first of all dogs entered at least 3 times, 2nd 8 times, 3rd 4 times, 4th 2 times. If you take out the small dogs--who get 5 seconds more, which could be at least another 2 tunnels (6 points) or the equivalent for us--that moves her up to 1st at least 12 times, 2nd at least another half a dozen times. You can see why I like it. :-)

And you can also see why some 3-dog DAM teams in USDAA like to have a small dog on their team: In USDAA, small dogs also get more time than big dogs in the point-accumulation games, so a team with fast small dogs could, in theory, beat a team with all big dogs just during those few extra seconds.

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