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Novice question about Novice


Rosanne
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Sue,

I think Rosanne is referring to an assisted drive when she means leaving the post to help. It would be VA novice's equivalent of leaving the post to start the wear and therefore not a retiring "offense." But you do make a good point: In the novice classes (and even in open, really), if your dog is having trouble, don't stand rooted to the post--go HELP YOUR DOG! You and the dog will gain a lot more out of the experience if you can help the dog to get it right instead of just standing there at the post praying that you muddle through somehow all the while your dog is doing things it shouldn't or is simply struggling when a little help from the human would make all the difference in the world.

 

As for the Larky brag, I ran her in P/N this weekend at the VBCA trial and she placed 5th on Sat. and 4th on Sun. out of something like 25+ dogs. I was proud of the little mite. But the best part of all was the work she got to do on the open field after I finished setting sheep for the ranch class on Sat (I used her because I had been using Twist and Kat in the 95-degree heat to set sheep and wanted to give them a break). She took the remainder of the flock that was left at the top and pushed them the length of the open field down to the exhaust, then after we were told there was a run-off she went back and gathered them off the barn, and then as she had them nearly back to us, we were told "no run-off after all" and she got to push them back down the field again--the longest drives she's ever done. I didn't know then that we had placed in P/N and I told my pen helper that I didn't care what her trial runs were like--that little bit of work experience for her made the whole weekend worth it!

 

J.

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I started trialing in NEBCA. NEBCA is an excellent organization, very novice-friendly. You are lucky to be starting out there.

 

The class progression is N/N, P/N, Ranch, and Open. The N/N course is usually outrun of about 100 yards (although some trials, like Keepstone, are much shorter), lift, fetch between panels, wear between another set of panels (like one leg of a drive but you walk and the dog holds the sheep to you), pen. Assisted drives are allowed (and it's usually what you do when you're getting ready to move up but not quite ready yet to drive) but some judges require that you tell them beforehand whether you're going to wear or drive, so you can't decide on the fly in there.

 

P/N is basically the same course except that you have to drive the panels while remaining at the post. Sometimes the course is a tad bigger.

 

Ranch is a much larger course with a full drive and crossdrive, an Open course with no shed.

 

Open is Open.

 

I would recommend that you start in N/N. In NEBCA you can move up whenever you want, so if you're bored in N/N you don't have to stay there. Once you can drive, moving up to P/N is extremely painless. I found that the big leap, in NEBCA, was P/N to Ranch because the courses suddenly get much larger.

 

Fly and I started in N/N even though she was bought as a trained dog. She was not an Open dog overseas. I worried that maybe I should start in a higher class. It turned out that having a trained dog did not help me much in my first few trials as my handling skills left a lot to be desired (after one run, a number of handlers sympathetically explained what "crossing the course" means to me since I'd allowed Fly to do it something like five or six times). However, we did progress faster than we probably would have if Fly had been totally green, so after we won our first N/N trial I immediately moved Fly up, and then I did the same for P/N. We were running in Ranch when we left the east coast.

 

In NEBCA when you accumulate a certain amount of points, you have to move up in classes. I don't know how many points because I moved up before we had to. You are not required to start in P/N until you become an Open handler. I am still not an Open handler, so if I went back home with a new dog I would be able to start in N/N even though I've been trialing for five years. My goal is to get Fly into Open before she is too old to get around the course, so hopefully this will not remain the case.

 

Out here in CA, the progression is scarier in a sense because there is no class that is the equivalent of P/N on the east coast. Out here it is N/N, P/N, and Open, with P/N being the equivalent of Ranch back home -- Open course with no shed. That means you go straight from the little course with the wear/assisted drive, to an Open course with no shed. On the other hand, there are TONS of novice-only and fun trials here, so the opportunities are there for newbies, it's just that it takes more to be able to stay in the game, especially since the courses out here tend to be ginormous.

 

I say go and have fun. There are tons of trials with novice classes near you if you're willing to drive a few hours and being an agility person I know you are not unused to doing that!

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NEBCA uses a points system. In that case (and I am not a NEBCA member, so someone will have to correct me if I get this wrong), once you have accumulated a certain number of points, you move up to the next class, even if it's the second day of a two-day trial. The disadvantage of this system is that a team might not really be consistent at trials but happens to do well at a large trial and so accumulate enough points to be required to move up, ready or not. That said, I still think that stretching (moving up before quite ready) is better than allowing folks to stay too long in a lower class. But then I've never been forced to move up before I felt ready, so my opinion is colored by that.

 

NEBCA's novice points are determined entirely by the dog's scores, and not by the method used to calculate USBCHA points. So if a dog gets a score of 60 in a novice-novice class, it gets two points whether it beat 15 dogs or came in dead last. Given that there's a maximum of five points per trial, you can actually be running in and winning the various novice classes for quite a long time before you accumulate 40 points and have to move up. However, you never have to accumulate points before you move up. You can move up whenever you think you're ready. Very few people "point out" of a class, but it does happen. Basically, if your dog isn't ready to move up by the time you've accumulated 40 points, pointing out is the least of your problems.

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EGADS Julie- AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Wow. Little Larky Malarky- I would have just been beaming- and for the same exact reasons as you- moving those sheep that far etc.- you can ride that high for quite a long time. Any recent pics of the star?

Julie

 

As for the Larky brag, I ran her in P/N this weekend at the VBCA trial and she placed 5th on Sat. and 4th on Sun. out of something like 25+ dogs. I was proud of the little mite. But the best part of all was the work she got to do on the open field after I finished setting sheep for the ranch class on Sat (I used her because I had been using Twist and Kat in the 95-degree heat to set sheep and wanted to give them a break). She took the remainder of the flock that was left at the top and pushed them the length of the open field down to the exhaust, then after we were told there was a run-off she went back and gathered them off the barn, and then as she had them nearly back to us, we were told "no run-off after all" and she got to push them back down the field again--the longest drives she's ever done. I didn't know then that we had placed in P/N and I told my pen helper that I didn't care what her trial runs were like--that little bit of work experience for her made the whole weekend worth it!

 

J.

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Well, Julie, if I didn't like you so much, I'd be jealous to the point of not liking you! Just kidding, of course - well, not kidding about liking you, just kidding about not liking you.

 

I like the Lark, too. She's one keen little girl and I think she has a great future in your more than capable and caring hands.

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Yay Twist! Well, and yay Lark but Lark's time in the sun will come, I"m sure. How exciting is that?

 

Looking forward to hearing about, um, this coming weekend, right?

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Thanks Robin. I think you also managed some mighty good runs both days--I wasn't the only one taking home ribbons! :rolleyes:

 

Hey Sue,

Well you never know, but I think she is back to her old self pretty much, and she did put down an awesome run on Saturday (only 5 points off the entire run). Sunday we couldn't get a shed to save ourselves, and the more we tried the hotter and slower she got. Twist is an awesome shedding dog, so it was rather frustrating (since most of the groups had a sheep that was hell bent on NOT staying with the others and running for the exhaust--which was probably a worse problem than clumping sheep when it came to the rest of the run), but oh well, that's trialing, and our score was right up there even without the shed (not good enough to place, however)!

 

As for Larky, I think she'll turn out just fine. The sheep were difficult on the novice field, and our runs certainly showed a lot of room for improvement, but she *handled* the sheep very well, and that's all that really matters at this stage. I tried her on the cattle (yearling or a bit older heifers) at Tom's Friday and she did very well driving them around. It was rather funny that she never really offered to bite one, given that she thinks the rams are made for biting, and she was a bit worse about wanting to go to the heads, probably because the cattle tend to spread out more, but overall her introduction to cattle was a success. Pip was a bit hesitant (since he cut his corners and got to the cattle before Twist--we were using Twist or Pete to back up the young dogs so the cattle couldn't take advantage--did and so had no back up when they all turned on him) and Phoebe thought it was a great excuse to pull out her alligator persona again (there's one who has NO PROBLEM going for the heels!)....

 

Now if I could get Pip and Phoebe ready for prime time, I'd really be doing something.

 

J.

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