The 1999 Columbia Cup!

One of CAT's premiere events is the Columbia Cup.  This NADAC trial is held the second weekend in September and features the awarding of the Columbia Cup to the dog and handler team that run clean in all four standard agility events and beat the standard course times by the largest margin.

This year, the Columbia Cup had the added attraction of being co-sanctioned by the Australian Shepherd Club of America and being held just before the Aussie Nationals which were held in Longview, Washington.  As a consequence there were several new (to us) Aussie competitors from around the country.  The upside was that we got to compete with some excellent teams.  The downside was that many CAT members and competitors from other Northwest clubs were caught with their entries down when entries closed a couple of weeks before the deadline.  We're hard at work to figure out how we can handle the expanded entries as Agility grows in popularity while retaining the fun and friendly trial atmosphere we enjoy. 

The disappointment of not getting in to the trial did not hold CAT members back from working hard to make this trial a success.  Folks pitched in whether they were competing or not and many prospective members fulfilled their work requirements.  Three rings were set up and, at times, three rings were running simultaneously!  This was a bit of a challenge for Chief Ring Steward Cheryl Huffman, but she managed to staff all rings without any (big) hitches. 

The judges for this trial were Tammy Fields Wiebe from California, Penny Winegartner from Texas and and Whitney Lightner from Arizona.  They set fun and challenging courses and judged with fairness and good humor.  Trial co-chairs Jeanne Rice and Donna Schoonover had things well organized and under control (including two of the course builders -- their husbands). Jeanne's husband had best line of the weekend Saturday night at the judges dinner. When Jeanne, who is altitudinally impaired, stood up to thank the judges and give them their gifts (treat bags with the CAT logo), he said "Jeanne, why don't you stand up?"

Following are some images from the trial which we hope capture some of the spirit of the event. 

	The scene was organized chaos on Saturday morning as Novice competitors walked the course in preparation for their second standard run.
The gate stewards have the responsibility of getting everybody on the line, on time and in the right order.   It's a heck of a job for new members, but they carried it off just fine.
	A CAT member gets ready to gamble on Sunday afternoon.
An added attraction was that we got to celebrate Debbie Berkley and Nahtaki's (peeking between Debbie's legs) NATCH, which she completed at the RCA meet in Medford in August.  There weren't many CAT members there to celebrate with her then, but we made up for it here.  And, yes, Debbie did get that red.

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