12/21/2025
Here is Day 2 for Triple in the Semi-Finals for the RACH Invitational. Typically in Rally, handlers can walk the course (without the dog) before judging starts so they can figure out spacing for turns and jumps and learn the pathway for the signs. However, in this round no walk thru were permitted so handlers had to be able to read the map and then go perform the course with their dog and try not to fall into any traps that would cause them to lose points. Seems easy, except the time you take on a course is the tie breaker for tied scores and in this competition there are many ties. One of the top competitors who I thought would win the whole thing, made a critical mistake and fell for a trap that took her off course, missing signs 7-11. If you miss just 1 sign you NQ the whole run. This error knocked her out of the competition completely because she was moving too fast and didn't even realize she missed a sign and got led astray.
As for Triple, he had 2 competitors who tried to sabotage one of our runs by making sudden loud noise and movements right when we got near them on the course...you will see ME react to them by pointing and "shushing" them twice trying to advocate for my dog that they were trying to startle and distract. It is quite possible we lost the 2 points we needed to get into the Finals in this run because it threw us both off. I did report this incident to AKC for bad sportsmanship as both of those men were in the Top 10 and 1 of them was a judge who should know better about ringside etiquette. Better luck for us next year I guess. He finished this round with 290 of 300 and was 21st place out of the Top 50 dogs (118 dog overall).
