Here We Go - NADAC Style

A couple quick things before I start. Mike and I spent HOURS last night trying to get pictures posted. We did everything just as it says. It then tells us our pictures were posted successfully. I don't know about you but I'm not seeing any pictures. I taking lots of pictures to help tell the story - hopefully some day you'll get to see them!

Please remember that every single person at the Championships is going to have a different experience and a different perspective. What you read here will be my from my perspective and will be my experience.

Okay, here we go - NADAC Style! We all pour into the building just before 7:00am. The bleachers are small so they were pretty much full. I remember the first year we went we knew no one - not one person. This year it seems as though we know probably 80% of the people.

Well, we started of with a bang. They couldn't find the CD that had the national anthems on them so Sharon asked Chellie to come down to lead us in the US national anthem. Just as she started to sing I figured I'd better stand up. As I started to roll over to get up my board (and thus me!) fell off the bleachers and down I went with a very loud bang - right in the middle of the anthem. How embarrassing is that! I was so wishing I was invisible. Not to worry, I'm okay. My elbow is a bit banged up but it will heal. Now I'm afraid to lay down! So after the anthems I decided to walk around to listen to the rest of the briefing.

The first course is Chances. You think you know how things are going to go - but wait, this is NADAC and once again things start with a twist. The first thing you notice is that there are no numbers on the course. There aren't three lines like normal just a box in the middle.

Sharon starts to explain things and we all realize we are in for quite an experience. I'll never be able to explain it all here without typing for hours but I'll do my best to give you a small idea of what we're up against.

The first two obstacles are obvious - jump, dogwalk. But from there you can do an outer loop followed by an inner loop OR you can do the inner loop first and then the outer loop. From there you do a dogwalk, tunnel followed by another inner/outer loop choice doing one then the other - the order is your choice. Confused yet? Well, that's only the beginning. Each obstacle (except jumps) is worth a certain amount of points - depending on where you are standing. If you are in the half of the box closest to the obstacle then the obstacle is worth three points. If you are in the half of the box farthest from the obstacle then the obstacle is worth six points. If you are outside the farthest side of the box then the obstacle is worth nine points. If you don't do an obstacle correctly you get zero points.

In addition there is a time limit - we don't know what that is. If you finish over the time limit then points are deducted from your score. If you finish under the time limit points are added to your score.

HUH!? Needless to say, I heard a lot of people saying that they aren't worrying about any of the rules - they are just going to go out and use this as a warm up run. Since Wazzu can't do much I have to pick and choose runs. Since this had jumps in it and no one could tell me how you would "Q" in this, I decided to scratch Wazzu from this event.

It's been a couple hours since they started so I think I'll walk back over and see what is going on. I imagine it will be a couple more hours before it is Sparkie's turn as she is the third to last dog. Poor Sparkie!

What's the Chance?
Debbie & Wazzu - two hearts beating as one