AKC agility; yes or no?

I have several AKC agility trials coming up in the next three months and I’m just not sure I want to keep running in AKC at all. I’ve looked back at Dolcenea’s running statistics comparing AKC to all the other venues we run in, and I’ve noticed her Q rate has dropped drastically in AKC, especially trials I run here at home.

Competing in Agility – the way I see it

I read through e-mail posts by agility exhibitors on how wonderful the trials are, how they really enjoy attending the various venues, how helpful everyone always is, and how they can’t wait until the next trial! This is all great and wonderful but for some reason when I attend agility trials, local or otherwise, my perspective on “what goes on” is very different from everyone else.

July 24, 2011 - OMG what a horrible trial!

Everything was so screwed up I really don’t know where to begin the story.

June 20, 2011 - Texas agility trial

Packing up the car to head to Texas for this weekends AKC agiity trial. The weather is going to be hot; 103 listed on weather.com all 3 days. eek! Thank goodness we're in an air conditioned facility!

CPE Nationals June 2011

I can’t remember where I found out about CPE agility, but somewhere along the line of running in 7 agility venues I decided to add another one so we could compete in their Nationals planned for June 2011 in Lake Elmo, Minnesota.

Mr. Lancaster and the Colorado Flag

I'd pretty much given up the idea of decorating my stall (crating area) at the CPE Agility Nationals, after driving to 7 stores in two days without any success of finding a Colorado flag.

AKC Agility Invitational December 2010

Dolcenea and I worked extremely hard to finally qualify for the AKC Agility Invitational so we could compete in this prestigious event and be an excellent representative of the purebred Akita while Dolcenea was in the prime of her agility career. This was a goal I had planned for Dolcenea long before we ever entered our first agility trial together.