First, I do want to applaud Chris and NADAC for all of the great new changes that will take place in 2019!
I think these will be helpful in recruiting new people to the venue. I can see from the response that a number of current competitors are happy to see the implementation of a the achievement cups for teams at the Novice and Open Chances levels and I think that is a good thing. Unfortunately for those of us continuing to struggle for those last few Q's at the Elite Chances level we will just continue to struggle. It doesn't make much sense at this point to move our dogs down a level to earn these new awards. As I noted in my original post regarding increasing participation in NADAC, the distance challenges just keep getting more difficult making it harder and harder for our newer dogs to reach our goals and earn their championships. In addition to the increased distance, we are seeing challenges now where the layering of contact obstacles and tunnels make it impossible for the dogs (particularly the small ones) to see our cues to them at all. On the advice of an excellent local AKC instructor, I am working on teaching stronger verbal cues and hope that this will help. We host guest instructors several times a year, but are still unfortunately in one of those areas with no NADAC instruction. Maybe someone in our area will step up for the new certified training opportunity. I will be spreading the word.
Overall, I do think the changes are positive ones. Good work guys!
