Reflections on the Invitational

The 14 dogs that ran in the Invitational

Littermates Autumn Moon and Wild Apple Jack have each been invited to 4 Invitationals and have earned a total of 10 championships (5 each including Jack in the 2007 Grand and Moon in the 2008)

Got back last night and most people probably already know that Tehaar’s Elvis and Upper Cover Desert Devil were named winner and runner-up respectively. So this post is more about the Invitational as a whole. It is probably the toughest test of cover dogs that we have. It’s possible for any of the dogs that participated to hit a home run and some of them like Wild Apple Jack and Autumn Moon have done it a number of times. The Invitational on the other hand requires a dog to show consistency for three days and that’s what the winners did. Elvis found birds the first and last day and ran well enough on the second day and then scored on a grouse again in the finals. Desert Devil had grouse on the second day and an acceptable run on all three days. Bloom’s Ole Dollar and Quail Trap Sadie took themselves out on the third day with races that were not up to the standards set by the judges.

Personally, I learned something. Wild Apple Jack has been a consistent performer over the years and one of his strongest attributes has been his bidablity. In Pennsylvania this week he showed that he could tune me out and run the country on a mission of his own. The only good part of this was that he showed athletically he is still strong and powerful as he saw more of the two courses he ran on in Marienville than any of the other dogs. It also shows that even an 8 year old dog with multiple championship wins still needs to be tuned up as well as conditioned. He was definitely in shape but he was on a different wave length. There is training to be done before his next run over at Mid-Coast Maine at the end of the month.
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