Raven wins Snooker Class

Today Western Australia held it's first ever Snooker trial event since the introduction of the new games rules on July 1st. We had judge Clive Makepeace over from Victoria and he had the honour of setting the first Novice course. In Snooker Novice the maximum points you can earn is 51 if you do what is known as "Suicide 7", in other words you try and do the set of 12 weavers three times before you do your closing sequence. You must attempt at least two red jumps (there were four out there today on the course you may only jump each red jump once) followed by a colour obstacle which garners a certain amount of points. Weavers are worth 7, dogwalk is 6, broad jump 2, tyre is 2 etc etc. A number of dogs attempted the "Suicide 7" and at least 4 did it successfully. So those 4 dogs who each had the maximum points then decide the placings via their time. I'm very proud to say that Raven got her 51 points and did the course in the quickest time of 36.39seconds (SCT was 55). I initially thought and still do really that Snooker would be the least enjoyable of the games simply because of the handling you have to do to get your dog to *avoid* doing obstacles that will immediately excuse you from the ring. It has the same stipulation as Gamblers - that the closing sequence must be completed without fault however that issue of only being able to do a red jump once and then running off to have to find another red jump after you've done a colour was always going to be a drawback for me! Especially if a red jump gets knocked down then you really have to make up a plan on the spot. With Cypher I didn't labour under any delusions of being competitive with him, so I just picked a simple course which gave us our minimum points and then prayed that he'd stick the weavers in the closing sequence. He was a good boy and did pass his first Snooker trial. Raven also had a win in Open Jumping to finish the day off and Cypher came 6th out of 12 in the same class as well. Despite not qualifying in either Masters class or Open Agility with Raven I was happy to see that out of 5 runs today she had only knocked one bar (Masters Jumping) which had been helped by me not handling her to plan. Cy was away with the fairies in two of his runs - Masters Jumping and Open Agility and in Excellent Agility we were going great guns till about the third obstacle from the end, when he was convinced we needed to do a tyre despite me standing next to the broad jump, pointing at it and saying quite firmly "Come!". He tried doing the tyre twice before he realised that we didn't seem to be going anywhere. He finished with a flourish though as is his tendency these days. Oh well there's always next weekend! See below for some great photos of the dogs in action today - for once Cypher looks like he's moving with a purpose rather than just posing for the camera!