Distracted Riot
Tonight was handling 3 and the over all theme of the night seemed to be “What’s that over there?”
I have never seen Riot so distracted as he was tonight. He had a little but of this the first time we took handling 1 and there was another dog working at the same time as him, but for the most part, he’s been able to focus on the course despite the distractions around him.
Our first two sequences of the night involved serpentines and Riot did them very nicely. The jumps leading up to the serpentine that were facing the other direction, were another story as he half paid attention to me and half to what was going on over there so his turns were quite wide.
Our next two sequences were kind of like grid work with a straight tunnel through the middle. When Riot wasn’t distracted, he did really well. I however kept drifting that was pulling him off — bad handler. Our last sequence of the night, both of us lost our head about halfway through. We also had a lot of issues with a one jump sliced lead out (something we’ve practiced since probably 6 months).
I’ve never had to used his full name on course to get his attention as much as I did tonight. I’m hoping this is a fluke and not a sign of things to come. Tonight was a bit if an unusual night as he was in his crate 90 minutes longer than usual and ate dinner about 45 minutes late.
He ran the first sequence at 20 inches and then I bumped him up to 24 inches for the remaining three. He had one ticked bar, but no drops.
