25/08/2025
Some have been asking: “How did you lose 130 points on a 100 point course at the 2025 AAC Agility Nationals Competition?” Here is what happened! Exhibit A: see the course map. Obstacles must be taken in the numbered order. Anything different removes points. Note that obstacle 12 was removed, so the numbers went from 11 (jump) to 13 (tunnel). So here’s what happened: #1-4 went well. On #5, Kovu missed the entry to the weaves (refusal, 5 points) and then popped out of the weaves once (fault, 5 points). Then we took #6, but here’s where it went bad. In the moment, early in the morning no, first National’s run, I’m nervous, Kovu is nervous, everyone is watching us… and my brain hiccuped 😱 As we took #6, my brain thought we were taking #10 (it’s the same jump). So I continued with #11, then #13 ( #12 doesn’t exist). As he comes out of the tunnel, my brain kicks into gear again, and I realize that I’m not supposed to be here yet 🤣😂🤣 but Kovu was going SO GOOD and he was having so much fun! So instead of making him stop, and restart on an earlier obstacle to fix my mistake, I made a split second decision to just keep going and finishing the course. I shrugged, made eye contact with the judge, blurted out while giggling “ooops! We’re just gonna keep going!” 😅😅😅 and we finished the rest perfectly! I was very proud of Kovu, as he did GREAT! Me? Not so much 🤣😂🤣 When I took #11 instead of #7, that essentially gave us an Off Course, meaning 20 points. If I had decided to go back and fix the off course, then we would have lost a total of 30 points out of 100 (5+5+20). But because I decided to keep going, I essentially skipped obstacles 7, 8, 9, and 10. Skipped obstacles are considered “non-complete”, for 20 points each. And so now, I have accumulated 5+5+20+20+20+20+20, for a total of 110 points lost on a 100 point course 🤣. But why did I lose 130 and not 110? Well, on the paper, the judge wrote that I had 5 non-completes, which makes a total of 130. But either way, I end with zero points, and so I didn’t want to bother the judge to get that fixed, it wouldn’t have changed anything 😅 for a few months now, I have started every run with a High Five from Kovu. A