Page 38 - Demo

New AAC Recommendations by Pam Smith,Agility Editor
Time flies when you’re busy, and that’s what has happened since I wrote the last article. I had one topic in mind for this month, then the recommendations from the AKC Agility Advisory Committee (AAC) were posted online. Wow, the recommendations of the AAC cover a lot of ground. Coming to a consensus while on a committee is not easy, and I applaud the AAC in this effort. Thank you, AAC!
In this month’s column I’ll comment on some of the recom- mendations. My comments are based on my personal experi- ences as well as the experiences of many of my acquaintances. If I don’t have a comment on a particular recommendation, I didn’t include the recommendation in this article.
Chapter 1
Clubs may offer full refunds to exhibitors who have to cancel after the trial has closed but prior to the date of the trial, provided the club can fill any canceled entries from the wait list. The club must set a wait list deadline date that is between the trial closing date and time and the date of the trial.
I think this recommendation is valid. Many of my friends have had to pull a dog from a trial due to illness—their own or their dogs—and were not given a refund. This occurred even if there was a waiting list.
FAST scribe sheet shall have a new section added on the form for an alternative method of recording judge’s calls (e.g. 1 1 7 4 1 bonus, 10 etc.).
I understand doing a running tally of dogs’ paths during FAST, but believe this will require each of the software devel- opers to modify their programs. I say this because I don’t think it should be the responsibility of a judge to keep track of how many “1” jumps the dog has taken, and stop counting the “1’s” when the dog takes more than six of them. The same is true if there are bi-directional obstacles with the same point value given no matter the direction the obstacle is taken.
Trial site equipment may not be used for practice from 12:00 am on the day of a trial until 30 minutes after the trial has officially ended and all the necessary paperwork has been signed. If there are trials on consecutive days, the trial site equipment may not be used for practice from 12:00 am on the day of the first trial until 30 minutes after the last trial has officially ended.
This is a good recommendation as it means clubs can hold seminars on days prior to or after trials, and use the trial equipment.
If a dog is officially measured by a VMO or Agility Field Rep for a jump height card and that measurement places the dog into a lower jump height class, entrants in the Regular classes may move down effective immediately. This does not change the Preferred class requirements where the dog must be moved down in jump height. Judge of record measurements excluded. Applies to official measure- ments for the day of the show and all future trials entered.
This recommendation makes so much sense. I never understood why a dog couldn’t be moved down in height. I don’t understand why the judge of record measurements are excluded. I’m guessing there may be some computer program issues with this recommendation if it is adopted by AKC. I’m hoping the software developers will be able to make changes to their programs.
Chapter 2
Point multipliers shall no longer be used in calculating MACH Championship points for dogs placing first or second in their class.
Yippee! I’m glad this is being recommended. The multipliers never made much sense to me and I saw many people move their 16", 20", and 24" dogs up to the 26" jump height in order to get the multiplier points. The majority of these dogs were not built to jump 26".
The Preferred Agility Championship (PACH) title shall be awarded to all dogs competing in the STD Excellent B Preferred and JWW Excellent B Preferred classes who have obtained 750 Preferred Championship points and 20 double Q’s.
I’m glad this is being recommended, too. It never made sense to me that there wasn’t a Championship title available
36 The Australian Shepherd Journal November/December 2009