for those who are interested or don’t know …
Regionals are our Agility Association of Canada’s way to determine who gets to play at Nationals. In Ontario we have a seven ring two day event. Every dog runs in 3 events each day – a jumper, standard and gamblers class. Jumpers is worth 75 points. Standard is worth 100 points. Gamblers is worth how ever many points you accumulate with an added 35 points if you complete the main gamble. To qualify for Nationals you need to earn at least 350 points. You can earn bonus points for speedy clear rounds but any faults negate any speed bonus. You cannot score a negative score (believe me I checked!)
So two clean standard runs equals 200 points, 2 clean jumpers runs equals 150 points. So a little non gambling dog like Brody can actually qualify for Nationals .. but he needs to be fairly speedy and clear.
A quick dog can have trouble too – an off course counts for a 20 point fault, so in jumpers 3 off courses reduces your score to 15 in a heart beat. Most other faults are 5: a bar a refusal, a weave refusal etc.
It's nice that just about every dog has a shot of going to nationals.
a shot is the word – just a couple of mistakes in each class can easily negate any hope of getting the points .. for example .. one off course in one jumpers, 1 second under in the other 74+55, three missed contacts in one standard and an offcourse in another … 80 +80 and two 25 gamblers classes and nationals is a long way out … about 1/3 of the dogs who ran at regionals did not qualify for Nationals ..