Raising a Riot

We had a private lesson today with Claudia. Finally they got to have some activity — we’ve been out of classes for 2 weeks and it’s been too snowy outside to get any training in.

We ran one course. It wasn’t terribly difficult, but it was quite technical.

We actually did a lot of work on technical skills — discriminations, queuing deceleration and turns, extension and working on rear crosses. Skills is what we worked on for the remainder of the lesson — which we really needed.

I got a lot of good advice today. Probably the most important thing was that I need to get better about giving Riot more positive feedback more often. We were working on rear crosses and started the sequence with a jump, followed by a tunnel/dog walk discrimination (taking the tunnel), followed by a jump, rear-crossed to another jump. The first few times we did this, we didn’t have an issue with the discrimination, but the more we did it, the more confusion we saw with the discrimination. Part of this probably was that never once was he praised for making the right decision and doing the tunnel. I asked Claudia to get on me about that in pre-comp next session.

The puppy is 18 months today! Hard to believe how fast he’s growing up!

Riot, Cisco, and I are up in Cleveland, Ohio for the Crown Classic Dog show. I decided to enter him no realizing exactly how chaotic it was going to be — big noisy building with lots of dogs and people and noise.

Day 1

Riot seemed to have a few ring nerves this morning in JWW. He was looking all around and sniffing the ground and I had a hard time getting his attention. Because of this, I moved closer the second jump than I had been to get his attention and then pulled him off the second jump when I was moving out further (it’s so easy to pull him off things sometimes). After we missed that jump, he kind of took off to investigate. I was able to call him back, but he back jumped that second jump giving us a wrong course. Oh well, I’m just happy he came back. We took jump three and then ran out to investigate the cone for the weave poles. I brought him back, he did the poles and ran beautifully for the remainder of the course. His time was 42.10, SCT was 45 seconds.

For his Standard run, I was completely freaking out beforehand. I couldn’t believe I had entered him him Std when he’s see a standard course twice before, there is no way he’s ready for this. Well, he totally proved me wrong. The course went pretty much as planned. I wish I had taken the time to hold his contacts longer (he was 25 seconds under time, I had time to spend on contacts). And I had planned a front cross between jumps 3 and 4 well, that didn’t happen.

Day 2

Day 2 again started with JWW. I got a two jump lead out and pretty much ran the course as expected. He was clean on paper since the don’t count refusals for weaves in novice  but he did enter the weaves at the second pole and had to re-do them. He did the course in 10 seconds under course time even with re-doing the weaves.

It was a really long wait until Standard. We didn’t run until 6 o’clock. I took him out a little early and I didn’t bring enough treats over with us so I had a little bit of trouble keeping his focus while we were waiting. By the time the dog in front of him was going, he could barely contain himself. I got two barks while the dog ahead of us was finishing up and one more at the start line. He did hold his stay, but the rest of the run felt as frantic and hinging on being out of control — the way I’ve felt the few times I’ve run someone’s border collie. I’m not happy with the way I handled jumps 5 and 6. On paper I was thinking a cross would have provided a better line to the table, but when I walked it, I didn’t think it was necessary. With Cisco, it wouldn’t have been necessary. With the wild child, I should have figured a way to get it in there. I did learn, that I can call Riot off a jump though. His contacts were a mess, he did stop on the dog walk, but my intention of having him hold it was shot when he decided to fly through the tunnel. His a-frame, I released him almost immediately because I was pretty sure if I didn’t he would be releasing himself. By the time we got to the teeter, I was just barely hanging on — my brain does not work that fast! We again has issues with the weaves — he started with the poles on his right instead of left. Which, I have suspected we need to work on collection on courses — something we have not had practice with. But the run was clean and he got first place (he was also the only 20 inch dog to qualify).

Day 3

I’m happy to report that Riot hit his entrances to his weaves the first time both runs. But I didn’t get his runs on video.

JWW was really nice except  I totally blew it and did nothing to indicate the last jump (he’s been doing so well I forgot he was a baby dog and assumed he’d take it). So I cost him a clean run and we ended up in 4th place. He still had the second fastest time at 23 seconds, but did get smoked by a BC.

Standard was a gorgeous run. I held his dog walk and a-frame contacts for a long time after the chaos the day before. I was convinced the judge wanted to tell me to move on the a-frame.

Day 4

Today started with a 3:30 am wake up from Riot that he had to go out. This was followed by him getting sick at 4:30. I took him out and again and proceeded to lock Riot and myself out of my cousins’ house. We ended up not leaving until 7. I got there and took Riot and the entry papers out of the truck, got in, put him in his crate, and managed to get the last 3 minutes of his walk through. I went got Riot, gave him an imodium, let him pee, and went to wait his turn. I was hesitant about running him, but at the same time he was acting like himself so I decided to go ahead and try and if I saw any signs of pokiness or stress, I’d pull him. Well, he did great (he really loves this game), I was so busy watching his beautiful weave entry that I forgot where we were going and got lost on course. He saved my butt by choosing the right jump and we went on to run clean.

I took him out a little later and his stool was still not right, so I decided to pull him from his first Open Standard run and come home a day early.

I’m not sure if his tummy issues were cause by the stress of the environment, the number of treats and the different kind he had had the day before or he caught something at the show. He’s still acting like himself so I’m not too worried, but at least he’s home relaxing tonight instead of trying to play with his 2 yellow lab cousins.

I love running this dog! He’s just so much fun to run and running him feels good — I don’t feel frantic, I’m getting more confidence with him, and he always seems like he’s having fun.

Our last class consisted of a course that had 13 jumps — no tunnels, no contacts. It was a mixture of winged and wingless with a double, I handled it with two front crosses and a rear.

The first time we ran it, it was near perfect. The first front cross I was a tad bit late on and would have liked to have been a little further ahead. On the rear I was a little late and a little ahead and bumped into Riot.

The second time we ran it, it was probably the closest I’ve ever come to perfection running a course. The rear was not as smooth as I’d like it be, but it’s something I know I need to work on with him. I had lots of distance and really didn’t have to move as much as I probably would have running Cisco on the same course.

He’s already become so much fun to run. I can’t wait until we get a few more classes under our belt.