When Half the Battle is Just Remembering the Rules

USDAA Team.  Oh what a feeling.  Scary feeling.  When your team mate(s) rely on you to do the best job possible.  When making a mistake can be the difference for all of you.  When having friends play on your team and be there to celebrate or cry together.  Team.  Sometimes the most fun, sometimes the most disappointing.

What I loved most about team this weekend was the courses.  Dave Hanson did a great job of making it incredibly interesting.  One of the things he did was make the strategy courses difficult but fun.  Team gamblers had so many rules that it required an entire page to print them out. Figuring out the rules and how to get the most points was the part that made the difference.

Most important for this gamble was going over the finish jump when the buzzer sounded.  You had to know your dog and how many obstacles you could get in the time alloted.  One of my friends got the most points of all dogs.  Her dog was jumping the jump when the buzzer went off (AWESOME!!).  If you were within a second (either over or under) of the buzzer, you got another 5 points.  I was on the dogwalk when the buzzer sounded but on my way there, so I got 4 points taken away.  Many people were way on the other side of the course and had to run across the entire field to get to the finish jump...8 points off.

The other part of this was a distance gamble that you could attempt anytime.  Not a ton of people got the gamble.  It seemed straight forward to me, but tunnels...well that's Fin and my thang.

So much fun having something different.  Loved all of Dave Hansons courses.  Would love to compete under him again.