Historic UKI Trial

Laramie, WY

Went to my second UKI trial and Wyoming's first ever UKI trial on Sunday in Laramie.  Very fun, very laid back trial.  Unbeknownst to me it was held in conjunction with Stacy Peardot's agility camp so there were people there from all over the country.  In fact out-of-towners made up most of the crowd, there were only five of us that were local.  There's only ever been one other UKI trial in Colorado and that was 4 years ago.  I think I may be the only person who's competed in both.  Anyway, it was a very fun trial - small, laid back, super fun courses, 5 runs.  My idea of a perfect day.  Except for the part where we had a whole hour and only 2 dogs ran.  There were a lot of procedural delays because the venue is new and the trial was put on by a skeleton crew so there were unexpected glitches here and there.  But still the trial started at 11:00 a.m. so I was able to sleep in for the 2 hour drive and I was done by 5:30 so I was home in daylight.  Not too bad all things considered.

We didn't get course maps so I can't post those but I do have videos of all my runs.  I split them into Jumpers runs and Agility runs.  One thing about my GoPro camera is that the high quality of the video footage means huge files and my computer doesn't have enough oomph to handle them so I have to split things up.

Speedstakes, Fancy Jumping and Super Fancy Jumping

UKI Fancy Jumpers from colliebrains on Vimeo.


Fancy Agility and Super Fancy Agility



I have to confess to not being clear on what UKI calls their various classes and the premium is off the website so I'm not sure what they were called.  What I'm calling Fancy Jumping and Agility were the regular masters level titling classes and Super Fancy Jumping and Agility were the combined Biathlon classes that qualify you for something or other that is probably way too far away for us to attend.  Not that we qualified anyway.  But those courses were the most challenging and very fun.  We had off courses in both because I managed to get momentarily lost in both but I thought we did pretty well considering we don't see this stuff very often in trials and Strummer never saw the back side of a jump before a few years ago.  We've come a long way in our international handling at trials and I was super happy with his runs.  We did have a nice fast clean run in Speedstakes for 1st place though we were the only dog in our height.  Our titling jumpers run had only 2 refusals, thrilled to get through that without an off course. 

Strummer had a blast getting so many runs in.  Normally I would never enter so many in a day but with a 2 hour drive I figured I'd enter everything and pull if he looked tired.  Strummer very rarely looks tired and he was raring to go for all his runs.

Was fun to see so many new people running their dogs.  Definitely different from your everyday local trial without the pressure of a national or regional event.  UKI is by far the most fun of all the venues, I so wish we had more trials.

And apparently we can't have a UKI trial without pigs.  During the hour delay I took Strum for a walk around the Animal Sciences barn at the trial site and found the pigs.

I couldn't get any closer for pictures because do you see that moat of muck in front of their pens?  SO gross, no way I was stepping in that.  Also the pigs were getting agitated by the sight of me and/or Strummer and making angry snorting noises, getting stiff aggressive postures, etc. so I backed off pretty quickly.  And somebody was very, very scared of the pigs and pulling my arm off to get away.

So I snapped a couple rushed photos and got out of there.  Plus the smell.  OMG, the SMELL.  Just as bad as the other UKI trial.  Horribly dirty animals, I don't care how smart they supposedly are.

No more trials until maybe DOCNA in August and then USDAA in Sept. but sadly they'll never approach the fun and challenge of UKI.