Love the letter Q

I love the letter Q. Why?

Because in dog-competition-speak, it means a qualifying score. It probably means the same thing in human-competitions too but instead of a P = Pass, we use Q and NQ if our dog did Not Qualify. Anyway, at the Poodle Club of Canada's all breed rally and obedience trials on Friday and Saturday, we got a few Q's! Tyro finished his CKC Rally Excellent title with a 93/100 so he's now officially known as CH Varazs Napkelte Tyrone AKC/CKC CD, AKC/CKC RE, CGN. (Only the highest levels of titles are shown in his official name.)

Miska also got Q's in both Rally Excellent and Advanced classes to earn her third RAE leg in Canada (7 more Q's to go for her title).  And she had great scores - 100 / 100 in Excellent with 2nd place on time and 99 / 100 in Advanced with a 4th place, again on time - she was the fastest dog with a score of 99.

Miska with her 2nd & 4th place rosettes for rally excellent & rally advanced.

The sweetest Q came the next day (Saturday) when Miska competed in Open obedience.  After a heartbreaking NQ in the morning trial when she failed to drop on the Drop on Recall exercise (there is no forgiveness; if they fail to drop, it's an automatic fail regardless of how well they do in the rest of the exercises and she had done the rest really well), she finally Q'd in the afternoon trial!! And not only that, her score of 193 was good enough for First Place or High in Class!!  Rather than giving her a hand signal for her drop on recall in the afternoon, I gave her a verbal command and she followed suit and did it!  Her nemesis of late has been the broad jump when sometimes she walks through it rather than jumping over it but she did it flawlessly in both trials.  It helps that the Cdn Kennel Club's rules allow veterans to jump lower heights so she only had to jump 16" for the high jump and 32"for the broad jump exercise.  This means there is less space between boards in the broad jump. 

But it's never over until it's over and she still had to perform the 3 minute out-of-sight long sit and long down before we knew whether she qualified.  Boy those long stays seem to last forever at that point when you've qualified up to that point.   Before the long stay exercises, I promised her a Big Mac steak if she qualified.  Did she understand?  I dunno but it worked and I gave her some steak for supper as her just reward.

Miska with her High in Class (1st place) rosette in Open A

Miska's well deserved steak!