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Florida Agility
a guide to dog agility competition in Florida
These statistics are a byproduct of a spreadsheet that I use to keep track of trials. I cannot report on numbers of runs, etc. Except for AKC, the figures are just not there. Even then it takes weeks to get the numbers from the AKC.
CPE is the second most popular venue in the terms of trial weekends and trial days. The bulk of the trials are currently held in the main part of Florida north of Tampa. All of these sites are outdoors on grass. Recently, Calusa has been offering CPE trials at Bratty Paws (indoors on synthetic turf). Also, the introduction of CPE Speedway events that consist of hoops, barrels and tunnels and the smaller space requirements have prompted IPOC to hold some Summer Speedway events on their indoor mats.
Some useful CPE links
DACOF is a state wide agility team competition that is usually held at the end of June at a large indoor facility. It is not sanctioned by any organization but generally follows AKC rules. Teams are sponsored by clubs or can just be a group of individuals that train together.
DACOF also has a Facebook group
If you would like to organize a team, you need to start planning by January. Check the “Send a Team” title on the DACOF web site for what you need to do to send a team. Also check the “Important Deadlines” page on the site for the various deadlines. These deadlines will also be in the Floridaagility Calendar.
NADAC is in the bottom tier (under 20 trial days per year) of trials in Florida. All of the trials are in the Tampa area and do not have RV facilities. They are mostly outdoors on grass and a summer trial indoors at DTCT. Ileana Nadal, who hosted most of the NADAC trials recently passed and the future of NADAC trials in Florida is TBD.
Some NADAC links.
TDAA is in the bottom tier (under 20 trial days per year) of trials in Florida. Most trials are in the middle of the peninsula. They are mostly in indoor training buildings on mats. One trial set is held outdoors on grass.
TDAA links
The most popular of the venues. Nearly half of the trial sets and over half of the trial days. Most AKC events are held indoors on artificial turf or in outdoor covered areas on dirt. A few are held outdoors on grass. Most of the AKC sites have RV facilities or will allow dry camping. The major exception is the indoor site at St Petersburg which does not have room. AKC trials are held in all parts of the state from Pensacola to Miami. Most weekends will have at least one set of trials and I have seen as many as four AKC trial sets spread across the state.
Some useful AKC links:
UKC is in the bottom tier (under 20 trial days per year) of trials in Florida. The trials are basically offered by two clubs. MADTA in Ocala and IPOC in Lakeland. IPOC trials are indoors on mats and MADTA is usually outdoors with Obedience, etc in their building.
Links for UKC
The Australian Shepherd Club of America ranks in the bottom tier of agility trials in Florida. A single club offers four sets of three day trials a year. The trials are held under a covered arena (Baker, FL) in the panhandle..
Some useful ASCA links:
UKI lies in the middle tier of organizations in Florida. Not as many trials as AKC or CPE but significantly more than the organizations in the bottom tier. The UKI US-OPEN will reside in Jacksonville for the next few years. Anyone can attend the US OPEN but you can earn byes into the later rounds at UKI trials. The trial sites are either on grass or on synthetic turf at Bratty Paws.
UKI Links
USDAA lies in the middle tier of organizations in Florida. Not as many trials as AKC or CPE but significantly more than the organizations in the bottom tier. Most USDAA trials are held in the north half of Florida. Most of the trials are on grass but Pals & Paws does them on dirt indoors at the Jacksonville Equestrian Center or outdoors on dirt under cover at the St. Johns county fairgrounds.
USDAA Links
The following are the notification options. In general they are the easiest (and most invasive) to the most difficult (and least invasive) order:
FEED LINK: http://floridaagility.com/premiums/premiums-index.xml
I have a bookmarking tool that I use that makes this process easier. START.ME is a web based tool that saves your links in one or more web pages. I can access any of the links from any browser on any device. However, it has a nice feature on desktop/laptop devices using a Chrome based browser or Firefox (maybe others but not Safari), I can open a group of links in multiple tabs. For example, when I discover a USDAA trial, I will bookmark the event page in a start.me group. When I search for the premium for a USDAA trial, I will load all the pending USDAA trials in a bunch of tabs and then put my cursor on the first tab close button and start clicking. I sometimes click faster than my brain can process the screen and I will have to repeat the group a second time al little slower. This technique is also used for some AKC trials and UKI trials.
Finding trials is relatively straightforward. It is mostly a matter of searching and pattern recognition (recognizing something has changed since last time).
Finding premiums can be easy or challenging depending on the venue. I have several bookmark groups involved in searching for premiums and a couple of groups for searching for trials. The first group of bookmarks consists of AKC pro trial secretaries, and calendars for ASCA, CPE & TDAA. The second, third and fourth groups of bookmarks are links to event/document pages for AKC, UKI and USDAA. The last group is an eclectic mix of links that are mostly temporary in nature.
AKC is probably the most challenging but it does not need to be. AKC now allows clubs to upload premiums so that they show up on an event search or on the trial information page but this is not in widespread use by clubs yet. If a trial is being handled by a trial secretary with a web site, I will rely on their website and these are in my first group of bookmarks. If the trial is not being handled by a pro, I will bookmark one of the trial event pages and if the club has a web site that regularly posts premiums that page will be bookmarked. The bookmarks for the AKC event pages can be scanned very quickly.
ASCA used to be one my most hated calendars. However, recently they updated the site and the calendar is quite useful. Hint, once you get it set up the way you like, just bookmark the results page and you can repeat the search any time.
CPE The new CPE site is nice in that I can bookmark the trial page and rapidly scan a bunch of them in a short amount of time like AKC, UKI and USDAA. My main problem with the event page is the premium button is towards the bottom and requires some scrolling to see it.
NADAC is pretty simple. Currently, there is only one club that hosts trials so it is mostly a matter of monitoring their web site or the NADAC website.
TDAA like CPE puts a date of last modification near the top of the page so I can quickly skip the scan if it has not changed. Once loaded, it is just a matter of searching for FL ignoring the finds in lower case.
UKC trials require checking websites.
UKI & USDAA once a trial is discovered, the document page (UKI) or the event page (USDAA) is bookmarked into the appropriate group for quick scans.
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