Lure Coursing

For the moment, Rhodesian Ridgebacks are considered sighthounds by the AKC. This allows them to participate in the wonderful sport of lure coursing. The rules dictate that your dog must be over 1 year old and it's okay if he/she is neutered/spay. To start, you do trials. If the judge passes you the first trial, you can come back the next day and do your 2nd trial ad then, if you pass, you have just earned an official AKC title, Junior Courser, "JC". There are actually 2 lure coursing affiliations - the AKC and ASFA - American Sighthound Field Association. Different rules and different titles.

The object is to chase a plastic bag (bunny) that is whipped around a 600 yard course set with turns and straigh aways and to see who does it the cleanest and the fastest. The dogs will run in the same breed group, then a winner of that breed is declared and finally, at the very end, all the winners of their respective breeds come together and run the Best of Field run and then the winner is Best of Field (BOF). Those points are then added to your already existing points (if you have any) and go toward the next field title, Field Champion. And so on.

On May 18th, we boldly stepped in to the competitive arena of lure coursing with our then 14 month old, Beau. Way out in Altoona (about an hour from us) at Rocking Horse ranch, we met up with some other Rhodesians, tons of Whippets and a lot of not so well behaved Greyhounds. We waited out turn and then went out to dive our field test a shot.

Let me tell you this. Beau got a lot of attention. not only was he the only male Ridgeback there, people were excited to see this tall skinny puppy run.

Well... he ran.

And then he got to the first turn - about 100 yards from us, stopped and turned and came back to Matt. You see. It was the first time he had ever been that far away from us and he was a bit nervous about it. Happens to a lot of dogs, or so I am told. The judge came out from her position to tell us to hang around and come back for the practice at the end of the day as it seemed Beau showed some interest in the sport.

Here is the course he ran (Josie ran the same course at a different time)

We hung out until 4 pm - had lunch in Umatilla, and then watched a few more dogs run. At 4 pm, we went to do the practice and... well... Beau was done for the day. He did not want to run anymore. He was tired and he had no tolerance for the "bunny" He simply refused to run.
Oh well.

Maybe he's too young yet. Maybe he needs more work off leash to feel comfortable being away from his people. We were encouraged to try again by everyone there. Maybe we will.

Oh. When we finally got back to the car and got on the road, both dogs fell fast alseep

The next trials are in December and I think we are going to go.