How Much Is Too Much?

I've had some things on my plate this week. Well, just one big thing any way. I'll post some details when it's more or less over and done with. Let's just say I'm incredibly proud of my family. At a time when emotions have run at their highest, everyone has remained supportive without any blame placing or lashing out. Tomorrow, just one more day I think, before tensions can start to subside and we all start to feel relieved. I'm relieved just knowing that there's an end in sight.

I've laid low on the FB front regarding the AKC requirements for 2016 NAC. I really was looking forward to going back there, where Spy made finals in 2013 and where I hoped Kraft would debut at an AKC Nationals. I purposefully made sure not to trial enough for any of my dogs to be close to qualifying for 2015 in Reno, I just didn't want to have to make that trip again. Plus it would have taken a butt load of trialing to get Kraft qualified since he was still in Novice/Open this time last year. He would have broken down for sure if I had tried. Hadn't really intended on trying to get him qualified for Cynosports, that was kind of an accident. IMO, qualifying for Cynosports is a bit too easy. He got his Steeplechase legs his first two tries. He got Masters Challenge by accident, if he had spun the opposite way when I overshot a weave entry, he would have gotten called for the refusal (that I thought he should have been called for any way) and wouldn't have gotten that either. Then I had to send him with a handler to try to get that second GP leg. And it's still way too easy to go to the US Open, no requirements at all (but they are still growing, so I can see why they are keeping it so open, but that's just it, they are calling it an "Open", do they ever plan to place qualifying requirements on who can attend or just keep making it harder to get byes like they are doing this year?) I thought this year would be a good one to bring the focus back to AKC, it would be a good goal to try to get him into masters and get some consistency in order to be able to get the necessary points by the end of the year. It would still have left me time to play in other organizations too, as qualifying in USDAA should go a little smoother now that he has some mileage, and I was hoping to get plenty of UKI in there as well.

But now this. I really just don't see him getting qualified under the new rules without breaking him down. I looked back at Marron and Spy's records from the past two years. Spy qualified with 580 points for Tulsa, 550 points for Harrisburg, Marron had over 700 points for Harrisburg. Marron has a ridiculously high Q rate. With Spy I was going for Invitational points during some of that time and still would not have made the cutoff, though she had some weave pole issues and weird disconnect problems too. Kraft's Q rate is going to be probably even lower than Spy's was during this time. I just can't see increasing how many trials we do per month though, unless we gave up all of those other things we want to do. I mean, Kraft *could* qualify, if I did 4 trial days per month, which isn't that much, but that's pretty much all the trial days I have available. I know everyone is saying it isn't up to AKC to give a Rat's ass what other organizations people compete in. And I agree with that in part. However, they SHOULD care about who they are going to attract to their national championship. And IMO they should want to attract those who are at the top of their game, regardless of venue. Which means playing nice with people who want to participate in multiple venues. And what it sounds like is they don't care if the "high fliers" no longer come to NAC. So it brings the question of where do we draw the line? I can calmly say that this year, Kraft still doesn't have the experience and consistency to qualify for AKC Nationals, since in order to make up for his current inexperience and inconsistency, I would have to trial so often. I will very comfortably just bow out again this year with him. I think he unfortunately falls into one of the unlucky categories of dogs that may have been specifically aimed at, those young dogs who are not running in Masters and qualifying at a consistent rate by the time the qualifying period starts. Spy probably could qualify without increasing her trialing too much, since her consistency is actually better than it was when she qualified for Tulsa (and she missed a month qualifying for Harrisburg for her surgery). But at what point do I vote with my money and say that AKC is asking too much, even of experienced dogs? Where will they draw the line? When will they find some other way of paring down the entries? I agree that they need to keep entries down, not make it too easy to qualify. But at this point I think they are cutting out the wrong subset of teams. Or am I just being sour grapes because I was one of the subsets of teams that is being cut out? The Novice/Open/Excellent dogs with some talent and promise?