Distance Handling in Action By Kristy Netzer © VICTOR STEEL PHOTOGRAPHY, INC. This month we're going to look at an AKC Open Standard course that I ran with my baby dog Diggity. One of the big issues I have in Novice and Open are the long distances between obstacles-I have a fast dog but I don't run very fast. I can use distance skills to greatly cut down on the number of steps I have to take on course. Look at Figure 1. This illustrates the path most handlers took when running this course. By using distance skills, however, I had a much shorter travel distance as shown in Figure 2. 15 1 15 2 5 5 17 1 17 16 12 16 12 1 13 13 11 4 4 14 14 11 3 10 3 10 128 9 AKC Open Standard Murfreesboro OTC June 23, 2017 Judge: Abbie Hanson 1 2 69 6 1 T 2 6 1 1 8 7 The path most handlers took on this course was 128 yards long. 48 9 T 8 7 The path I took using my distance skills was nearly 50% shorter. Clean Run | September 17