Whoop Hoop de Do!

Liam and I went to Guides Canins for a Hoopers trial yesterday. Guides Canins is about an hour and half away from me; it's not a bad drive as it's all highway, although my GPS wanted me to go cross country. I used to go there and camp when I was running agility with my other dogs but with Liam's eyesight I hadn't made the trip in years, not since before COVID. They've built a new facility in that time and it is spectacular. They have an indoor turf building, an indoor/outdoor dock diving pool, two large classrooms, offices, grooming rooms, and gender neutral bathrooms.   

Turf Hall

Entry to Dock Diving Pool

Dock Diving Pool

Classroom

This trip, we just went for part of the day so I left Teddy home.  We had to leave just before 7 am to get there in time to set up and give Liam some time for a walk before the trial started. We timed it right and  arrived just as they were opening the building. 

We ran 3 events. At the Beginner level, there are only 3 games, Hoopers, Tungo and Parkour; we ran one of each. In all of them you just follow the numbers and you can run with your dog but the judge will include distance challenges that are indicated by lines or by a handlers box. All of our runs included challenge lines. You earn points for getting a clean run but you can earn additional bonus points for being able to do the course from behind the challenge line or from within a handlers box. You might be able to see the line in this photo of us walking the course, there are marked with white tape.

Walking the Course

If you use the furthest line, there's 15 bonus points awarded to a clean run, the next line gave 10 extra points and the closest line gives you 5 extra points. A clean run under 45 seconds gets you 10 points and from 45 seconds but under 90 seconds gives you 5 points. But even slower dogs, if you can work the distances, can get good scores.

It takes 50 points in Beginners to get a title. Liam only needed 10 points in Parkour and Tungo to get his Beginner title in those games. I was pretty sure we could go clean but I wasn't sure how he would run in a new place and with so much distance between obstacles as we train in a smaller venue. I walked the courses using the 10 point distance line but in all of our runs I had to cross that line so we only got 15 points for each of our runs. Enough for his Beginner Tungo Dog of Canada and Beginner Parkour Dog of Canada. 

Now we move up to Novice in those games. Our next trial will be a virtual one and hopefully hell get his Beginner Hoopers title then as we now have 35 points in that game.  There's also an overall title once you have all the titles at a particular level, so getting our Beginner Hoopers title actually will get us two more titles. 

We'll have to work on getting more distance though as the distance challenges just get harder as you move up. 

But we're still celebrating so whoop hoop de doo!