Results - Freestyle, Växjö, June 6th

Folke and I were placed 3rd out of 10 in beginners class during yesterday's freestyle competition (10 entries, 2 pulled their entries) . We got 67 points from one judge and 62 from the other, giving us a total score of 129 points and an average score of 64,5. You need an average of 70 points to be allowed to enter in class 2 - I must say I think we passed our first competition with distinction!
We also congratulate Victoria and Pommac who came 2nd and showed the audience a neat programme to the song "Sånt är livet". They also made it to the local paper:
http://www.smp.se/nyheter/vaxjo/freestyle---forsta-danstavlingen-for-hundar(1364399).gm

Kellie came along and had a great time - watching, wagging her tail and finding a few dropped treats here and there.

Waiting

Victoria and Pommac were first in the ring followed by me and Folke.

Folke was a delight and it's so easy to tell he thinks freestyle is great fun.

The aim with our first competition was to avoid being disqualified. Second priority was Folke being completely focused on me and not everything going on around us (for instance the agility competiton) and that he would be happy in the ring.

Having this as main focus also meant that I deliberately did not prepare any choreography to talk about as I wanted to take the pressure off me and Folke having to keep track of too much choreography and tricks. He knows a couple of more tricks but I left them out.

Our performance on video uploaded on youtube since it took hours trying to do it on blogspot:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zf2jLz0F58Y

Many thanks to Margareta who helped me make our out-fit - it gave us the highest score.

Mandatory in class 1 is: dog walking around itself (360 degrees), crossing beween the handlers legs at least four times in a row, position work at least 5 metres.

Freestyle judging is a separate chapter - I guess I will learn as I go along but parts of it really does not make much sense. It is very hard to grasp what you have to do to achieve higher points (range from 1-5) - regulations are really vague on pretty much everything.

ALSO what I and other people at the competition reacted on was that the judges sat next to eachother and discussed the points - really takes away the whole point of having more than one judge. More than I had scratched over scores that were lowered to better match the other judge´s.

I seriously thought that they sat in opposite corners of the ring - both in order to see as much of the program as possible but also to show any difference in judging. Freestyle is a fairly new sport and therefore it should be even more important to have more than one judge, and most importantly that the judges do not co-judge, in order to establish a more coherent view on point values and what is required in each class.

There are - unfortunately - not all that many freestyle competitions around at the moment but next time I will have more choreopraphy prepared and also a few more tricks.