PVSSC Rally Trial - Saturday
We had a wild time at today’s Rally trial. I have so much fun with this dog, but he does keep things interesting.
This is the first time we’ve done rally since we started trialing in agility and I wasn’t sure what that was going to do to us.
I brought him into the building right as dogs started running in his class (there were 7 dogs competing in advanced A). We worked in a separate room with very few distractions and I was able to quickly get him to focus. We found a quiet area in the main room and worked some more and he was doing really well. There was no real room to work close to the rings and we needed to pass by the regular obedience ring to get to the rally ring. We arrived ring side with 2 dogs to go and practiced some sits, some downs, and some very small heeling patterns. I had relaxed a bit as we headed in the ring.
I made the mistake of asking “Are you ready?” right before we headed in and he gave one loud definitive bark. We headed in and he sat very nicely at the start line — even with my fumbling to get his leash off. The first three exercises were okay. They weren’t as precise as I’d like and he was a bit ahead on his heeling, but we made it through. The 4th exercise I stopped mid step to remind him to stay before finishing my step and calling him to heel. The 5th exercise was the serpentine and he was so far ahead of me by the third cone I had to call him back into heel position. Our 90° right pivot was very nice and then came the jump. Oh boy.
He did a very good job staying with me until I said jump when he took off, did the jump and continued forward to the ring gate where he decided to sniff. I had to call him to come back. He came back, back jumped the panel jump, and then as I told him to heel came back to me giving me one loud disapproving bark (apparently one jump wasn’t enough for him?). Of course I’m trying not to laugh at this point.
We actually pulled it together pretty nicely after that. His heeling still wasn’t where I wanted it to be (he was a foot or two further from me than he should have been), but the right spiral was pretty nice and the remainder of the exercises were completed decently.
We got done the judge handed me the leash and said we qualified. I think I just stared at her. She said we had an 80. I stared harder — my eyes might have been popping out of my head. Then she told me to put the leash on my dog.
We finished in 5th place. The judge asked as she was handing us our green ribbon if the golden was obedience bred. I sheepishly relied “yes” thinking about all the OTCHs in his pedigree and his fabulous brothers and sisters. She said that we were going to do fine. I guess she recognized some potential in my spirited youngster ;-)
On our way out someone stopped me and said that he was “full of life.” He’s full of something for sure.
There were a lot of positive things about today. First of all his behavior was so much better than at the Blue Ridge agility trial a couple of weekends ago. I was able to quickly get his attention and focus outside of the ring. Inside the ring, there was still a lot of stimulation and it was harder for him to focus, but overall he did well (we need more opportunities to work on off leash healing in new environments). He really is spirited and energetic, but that’s exactly what I wanted. And he keeps me laughing, I can’t help, but laugh at his antics. Guess that’s what you get when you name a dog “Riot.”
