AKC Invitational this weekend!

It's going to be a big weekend for many agility folks around the country. This weekend is the Eight Annual AKC/Eukanuba National Championships, held in Long Beach, California. Saturday and Sunday, nearly 2,500 dogs will compete for a total of $225,000 in cash prizes.

The show is in conjunction with the AKC Agility Invitational and the AKC National Obedience Invitational making for a combined entry of nearly 3,000 dogs competing in the three events.

At the Agility Invitational only the top five (5) dogs in each breed are invited to participate, including ILP/PAL dogs. The qualifying period was July 1, 2007, to June 30, 2008. The top dogs were determined by the Top MACH Dog formula (Double Q's x 10 + MACH points) that dogs have earned during the event qualifying period.

Some links and info:
Here is a listing of the breeds to find the top dogs competing. Another list of dogs by height and handler.
Running orders have been posted on the AKC site. (they are only listed by breed and number, not name :(
And here is the schedule of events.
If you're in the area and want to go watch, check this link for info.

Each day a Standard and a JWW course will be run. After the completion of the four rounds, over two days, the top dogs in each height will move to the finals.

The Agility Invitational will consist of Round #1 Excellent B JWW, Round #2 Excellent B Standard, Round #3 Excellent B Standard, Round #4 Excellent B JWW, Round #5 Finals (open only to top 57 dogs overall through 4 Rounds of competition).

For the finals round only one dog from each breed within each jump height will be invited to
participate in the finals.

AKC Agility Excellent B rules will apply with the following exceptions:

• Course faults will be scored as follows: Refusal or Run-out = 5 points; Wrong Course = 20 points; Failure (e.g.missed contact or dropped bar) = 5 points; Elimination (obstacle not completed or skipped) = Whistle (score of zero);
  
• Course time deductions = 3-point deduction for every second over course time truncating down to wholenumbers.
• All obstacles must be completed or a score of zero will be assessed.
• The 4-paw safety rule will not be in effect, however any dog incurring what would have been the 4-paw rule violation will be faulted 5 points and be required to complete the obstacle . The judge shall continue to judge the dog’s performance on the obstacle, i.e. refusals, missed contacts, etc.
  

ROUND 5 – FINALS
Dogs will be run in reverse order based on placements through 4 rounds of competition. This will be a Standard agility course and Finalists placements will be based on score, then time, from this class only.

We found a few folks (bloggers and twitterers) that may be providing updates throughout the weekend. Here are the links: (We'll add more if we find them.)

DogHouseArts - Twitter
Dog House Arts - Blog
Staffs-R-us Blog
Adventures of the Miller Four Pack - Blog
Adventures of the Miller Four Pack - Twitter

Premiere K9 Club is sharing videos from the event.
Karen Moureaux has photos up from the event.

Good luck to everyone competing!!!!

UPDATE! Here's a link to the final results.

Looks like Angie Benacquisto and Duncan the toy fox terrier, won the 8" finals! Congrats Angie, you guys are a great team!!!!! And she and Dylan won the 16" finals, amazing! 12" finals went to April (the Pom) and Gail Donaldson, 20" to Lacey (the Golden) and Paul Showan, and 24" to Blitza (GSD) and Gordon Simmons-Moake.

Here's Angie and Duncan's final round: