Raising a Riot

Besides the usual getting a ton of tips to help us improve, Karen said two things that left me on cloud 9 tonight:

1. We’d be able to qualify in the ring — our score wouldn’t be great, but we could get in the 180s. I told her I wanted to wait until we could get in the 190s and she said that was a good idea because he certainly is capable of it.
2. She said if he had an OTCH handler, he’d be well on his way to an OTCH by now. It’s nice to know that the potential is there, now if only I could learn how to handle :)

Tuesday was week 4 of our obedience class. Riot continues to improve every week. I love that Karen always has tips for us on how to improve and as we improve the tips get more and more refined so we’ve never felt overwhelmed with everything we’ve needed to know, but we keep tweaking and refining as we get better.

The highlight of the class was probably how well he did his figure 8. It was very nice and he paid very good attention to me. Our stand is getting more and more solid without only one slight foot movement.

We’ve finally gotten to the point where Karen asked if I had a goal for when I wanted to have him in the ring by and suggested this fall. I told her I was hoping by the end of the year. But it was nice to know she finally thinks there is hope for us to get into the ring. 

This morning RIot and I headed out to Purecellville for a Hounds on the Town class. Today’s class was a short hike to practice heeling followed by some time off leash (or on long lines) for swimming.

I didn’t let Riot off leash before we went on the hike. There were some dogs that were already swimming on roaming around off leash when we got there. The whole scene was very exciting and stimulating for Riot. We practiced sit-stays and down-stays while waiting for the hike to start. Admittedly with all of the distractions, this was very hard for Riot. He did really well other that needing a few reminders of which position he was supposed to be in. He was approached by 5 or 6 dogs and did very well letting them sniff him. One did growl at him and Riot just kind of looked at him like “what’s your problem?”

The hike was fairly short as it was already quite hot. I made Riot walk at a heel on the flat sections of the hike, but on the hills I let him have more freedom and just walk on a loose leash. He did really well. This was probably more of a challenge than he was ready for with so many dogs as distractions, but he did well.

The heeling I made him do was not the formal obedience heeling, but just walking by my side (as would be acceptable for field or just normal walking). I’ve been distinguishing the difference by my arm position. Arms down at my sides is casual heeling, arm in front of me is obedience heeling. He did have him heel about 20-30 feet formally which he switched to very nicely. The walk was too long and too hot to ask him for that the entire way. 

After we got back from the hike, the dogs hit the pond. Riot enjoyed swimming and even retrieved a couple of bumpers before a border collie took his bumper away while he was showing another dog how to jump in. We never did get our bumper back :( 

There were approx. 40 dogs around and Riot went and visited nearly all of them. He was very polite and well mannered and it was nice seeing him interacting with dogs in such a casual environment. There was one border collie that he just couldn’t get enough of. She was a younger girl and I’m not sure if she was spayed or not. 

I finally had to go and get him to leave this poor girl alone. I put him on a sit-stay while her owner was putting her into another yard that was fenced off. I released him right as the gate was being closed and he made a beeline and got there right as someone was opening it snuck in. That was the only time all day he did not listen to me. I went in after him and made him down before he got a walk of shame out of the yard. Other than that one incident, he listened to me incredibly well despite all the distractions. I was able to call him to me whenever/wherever and even put him on stays with all the chaos. 

He’s so funny. There was a shepherd that was barking at everything and he just stopped and looked at him with the quizzical look on his face like “why are you doing that?” 

After all this excitement it was back to work. We went and met Leslie for our very first force fetch session. Riot worked really well for her and I’ve got my homework to work on with him. Fingers crossed this goes well. 

I still have a few things to catch up on, but we’ll skip over that now to get to this week.

Riot had obedience on Tuesday night and he’s constantly improving. His attention is getting much better and he’s getting better at every exercise. I’m picking up a ton of tips for working on things, so we’re learning a lot. 

This week, Karen decided to work backwards and had us do stays first. Typically when we work stays it’s the end of class and a lot of the dogs are more tired. We also did stays down where there was more agility action so that made them even harder. Riot did well through he stays even if he was craning his neck as much as possible to see the dogs running agility in the next ring. He sat through the dog next to him getting up and having to be put back, and downed through it too. There was a little sniffing, during the down, but he’s getting much better about that too. 

I had him on a down while waiting our turn for another exercise later in the class and another dog came over and sniffed him and he didn’t get up or act like he was going to play with her. Which is a huge step for him too.

He’s getting much better about his stand for exam. I just need to learn not to lean into him upon returning. Karen said he’s even got drive for the stand. Which he does pop up almost instantly — much like his down. 

Most of the heeling work was done towards the end of class this week and I typically start to lose his attention towards the end of class. He works really well for about 40-45 minutes and then I think he’s ready to be done. But even though his heeling wasn’t as good as I’ve seen, he did watch me throughout the exercises. 

I had asked him at the end of class if he was getting tired and one of the other handlers asked me if he ever got tired. I said yeah, that he was actually a really easy dog to live with and had a great off switch. I think that really surprised her because he is a lot of dog and a bundle of energy in class :)

Wednesday night we crashed an agility class and Riot ran really well. He knocked a couple of bars on the first run and seemed to jump kind of funny on the last jump — which was not that far from a barrier so that might have had something to do with it. We re-ran the sequence and ran it perfectly. The second sequence had a two really difficult weave entrances and he hit both of them. He actually he all of his weave entrances all night. Not bad for a dog that’s been off from agility for nearly a month :)

This weekend we’re finally making it out to a field training session. I’m looking forward to seeing how our work in the backyard over the last couple of months translates into the field. 

And Sunday, I think we’re going to hit a rally show-n-go to work on heeling with distractions in a new environment more than anything else.