I agree with this to a certain extent - it really depends on the dog. MOST dogs this would be fine. Asha doesn't like strangers, much less me handing her off to them. In our very first trial if I had released her, she would have gone a ways after the lure, then turned and come back to me (it's what she did in the 600 yd Cat trial, so pretty sure she would have done the same in a Fast Cat).
@Ddski5, this would be a non-qualifying run. They have to go from start to finish, the timer starts at point A and ends at point B. If they run 3/4 of the way and turn around and come back, it's a NQ. If she
had run all the way down the field in a Fast Cat and a stranger was there to pick her up, she would have never gone to them, instead would have run the 100 yards back to me. If I'd left her with a stranger and gone to the pick-up end with a stranger holding her in the line of 4 or 5 dogs, half of which were screaming in desire to get the bunny, I think she would have turned inside out. I post about how tough she acts but defense is actually fear & self preservation and has to be channeled properly. So, know your dog. Ripley has been in crowds of strangers all throughout her biggest learning curve 1st year. You did everything and way more than I wanted to, and have a way better tempered dog genetically. I think Frejya would be good with strangers but Ragnar may be more like Asha. I pretty much had to encourage the prey drive in Asha and she caught on and has learned to go crazy over it now. If I was to critique her personality, even at 4 months old the prey drive was weak and the defense way too high & reactive. My recommendation would be for
@Ddski5 to take family for pick up and to release the dogs himself, at least the first time, see how they handle the atmosphere and go from there for the next time.
You should be excited! It's more fun than anything your dogs can do. I was pretty disappointed after my first run because of Ashas non-interest and looking for me instead of chasing the lure, but believe me, once she got the game in her head, she's totally out of control now before starting.
Another thing is most of the time you can request that the dogs not run close together in run order so you have time to get one ready, stand in line, run him/her, get back to the car, water and cool out that dog before you have to get the next one under way. If you make it a family affair with plenty of help this isn't a problem, but if you are by yourself it could be overwhelming for your first trip to the "races".
The title BCAT is the first one for Fast Cats. You get this after accumulating 150 points, each point is a mph. So for simplicity, if your dog ran 25 mph 4 times, that would be 100 points. You go to another trial and did 25 mph 2 more times that would be 150 and you get your BCAT title. My first 2 runs were 9 mph and about 20 mph so I got 29 points toward my BCAT. Hope this helps. Go to AKC Fast Cat Rules online to read all the details.
Enter up, keep asking questions. I don't know about your area, but around here these trials fill fast. If it's full and you don't get in, go anyway and watch to learn how it all works.
but not bad for her first time! One of the Melrae dogs is Ripley's full sibling from another litter "Melrae's I Want to Believe". It's a bit of a drive for us but they actually run at the place we went to so hoping to meet up with them one day! Its winter soon anyways but I'm going to let her finish growing up some more before we run again. Running like that is hard on them!
