Friday, November 10, 2006

The Size of Westworld

Original sender: Ellen----
I've been asked how big Westworld is. It's huge. The entire site must be 100 acres or more, but we were located only on the polo grounds, which is 19 acres all by itself.




From flyball and frisbee at one end to agility at the other end, it covers a huge amount of space because it's not square--it's about 3.5 times longer than wide--so my guess is that the polo grounds are about 1/3 mile from one end to the other. Although we never went as far as the far end, still, the area in which we were most active covered about 3/4 of the space, so one could easily cover 1/4 mile from the dog exercise and crating area to, say, the far side of the main agility ring or the far vendors.


Wednesday, November 08, 2006

USDAA Nationals 2006 Course Maps and Results Online

USDAA doesn't seem to have an organized page showing everything that you might want to know; you have to hunt through their news articles and blog. So here's what I've found:

Course Maps:


Results:

Tuesday, November 07, 2006

Some Sunday Results

Original sender: Ellen----
Here are some results from Sunday's events that I gleaned from the USDAA site. I'll try to go back and correct the bay team lists from the other events, since I see even more dogs that I missed (e.g., I know that Nancy Gyes & Ace/Mace won at least one class but I think I didn't recognize "Ace" as a bay team dog...)

Grand Prix finals ("BT"= bay team member)



Veteran Grand Prix finals





Power and Speed


You had to design your own contacts/weaves/spread double course and complete it, clean, within 29 seconds, then you earned the right to continue to the speed portion, otherwise Eed. I skimmed the higher placements only:

Monday, November 06, 2006

Sunday at the Nationals and Home

Original sender: Ellen----
I didn't take any notes on Sunday and not many for the daily events on Saturday, sorry, too busy. I did notice that I probably left out a few Bay Teamers on some of the earlier lists--not familiar with all the dogs' names--e.g., I believe that I saw Cap (Robert Yi) on some of the placement lists, but translated it to "Capuccino" and, when the numbers didn't match, let it go...

Those of us entered in Power and Speed on Sunday did not get to sleep in, showing up once again for 7:00 walkthroughs. After the walkthroughs, P&S ran in 5 different rings (I think) until about 10:30. The only results I ever looked at for P&S were for 26" dogs, where my Tika took a 10th place ribbon out of of something less than 130 dogs (several scratched, probably left for home early or saved up for later runs, but I wanted to repair my contacts damaged by Saturday's fast releases).

, then around 11:00 they let the finalist relay teams for championship & versatility walk their course. I know I'll forget people because I just drove in from Scottsdale, but Luka/Maja/Heath were in 2nd going into the finals but had some course bobbles and were not abe to overtake 1st place--but I'd say that 2nd out of 208 competing teams in this crowd is an amazing accomplishment. Other Bay Teamers among the 30 championship finalist teams included Boost/Annie/Piper and Brenn/Skeeter/Tika (yes, my Tika); Bert Gignac; and my brain is sort of jello otherwise.

I went to the USDAA site to try to get more detailed info to refresh my memory, but it's currently displaying:

"An overload on the system has caused temporarily interruption" -- Huh, wonder what could POSSIBLY be of interest on their site that everyone wants to look at? ;-)

Bay Teamers & friends had lots of representation in the grand prix finals and veterans grand prix finals (dogs 8 and older who had previously been in at least the GP semis). Nancy Gyes and Riot won in Veterans; Nancy was also in the championship finals with Panic. Jim Basic was in championship with Spy. Other BTers and local FOBT included: Rachel Sanders with Fable, Sandy Rogers with Brrrrrink, Sharon Freilich with Whoopie, Rob Michalski with Hobbes, Silvina Bruera with Maja, Sarah Johnson with Cruiser, Robert Yi with Cap, Debbie Auzenne with Junior, Jeanne Nixon with Brandy, Greg Leal with Coty, Susan Cochrane with Aiko, Kathie Leggett with Heather, Dave Grubel and Tahoe, all to the best of my fading memory appeared in one or the other yesterday afternoon.

Quite a few Bay Teamers had made it to the semifinals but the times were really really tight to get into the finals; e.g., FOBT Greg Leal and Tala missed by hundredths of a second, I believe.

The runs were exciting and the course was quite challenging, with a hard calloff choice between the dogwalk and teeter doing in many handlers; a difficult weave entry was taken full speed by most of these phenomenal dogs without an eyelash twitching.

The whole thing finished about 4:30, and competitors poured out of the arena, into the crating areas, and then into the cars, and the place was pretty much a ghost town by 6:15, with no one left but the show committee and course tearer-downers (thanks, Duncan & team, for the equipment!).

For the lighter (or more pathetic) side of the weekend, read this.)

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