John Heffernan

I am not sure of my next goal for me and Wyatt in agility, if any.

We will be doing probably one day of NADAC a month.  He is 11 1/2 years old.  We need 7 elite weavers Qs to get our V-NATCH but these have been few and far between.  He seems to get very frustrated with Elite Weavers with all the sets of 12 weave poles right after the fast tunnels.  Either that or I am doing something wrong.  I moved him down to Novice (3 sets of 6 and he did great).  We would need 13 more Elite Chances Qs for a NATCH-2.  Both of these goals would be tough at our current rate of competing.  I guess I will just enjoy competing with him and see what happens, with the addition of practicing more weave poles and tunnels and continuing to work on distance at home.

I am proud to announce that, after a 5-year effort and at the age of 11 and 1/2, Wyatt has earned his NADAC agility championship.  It took us 4 years and a great deal of training to get the 13 Elite Chances qualifying runs needed for a NATCH.  He also earned the required 13 Jumpers and 23 Regular qualifying runs. Elite Chances is a very difficult class, requiring you to run behind a marked line up to 30 feet away from your dog. This is Wyatt’s 66th title that he has earned.  I will write more about our journey to this title is a subsequent post.

I thought this NADAC Elite course would be way hard for us but Wyatt almost got it.  I have been working on driving to the end of contacts for the last 2 weeks and sending out from the bottom of a contact from behind so it’s good to know that seems to be helping.  Another Chance(s) for his championship tomorrow!

After getting our 12th Elite Chances Q, we need one more for Wyatt’s NADAC Championship.  We’ve made 7 attempts but no luck so far though we’ve had a few close ones.  I am not too worried but I am looking forward to getting it done!  I’ve had some problems getting Wyatt all the way down contacts at trials especially at a distance (fine at home, of course) and with running out of room and stopping so Wyatt, being an honest dog, also stops.   Have some more tries maybe in late June and definitely over July 4 weekend.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQQErLXQm9E&feature=youtu.be