We just had our last 2014 WCRL trial – the third one we hosted this year and my second time judging. It was a very fun day, we had quite a few students participating and they did very well – both in terms of having some great behaviors from their dogs and in placements/qualifying scores.
Blaze needs one more qualifying score at Level 3 – but it didn’t happen. We had knocked bars (eyes? mobility? over excitement?). He did the directed jumping successfully (his hardest exercise!), didn’t run away, and refused to leave the room when we were done.
Griffin had a great day – 2 runs for placements and two runs in “judge’s class” (courses I planned, judged by another judge – not for placements). All of his scores were over 200 (maximum is 210), one perfect score, and all our errors were handler errors or Griffin anticipating. I was very happy with how he did – he was very attentive, responsive, and engaged. We tried to do more AKC-obedience type handing off our leash and at the end of the course heeling to where the leash was located to help prepare for our upcoming AKC obedience attempts.
We still have things to work on! I neglected to appropriately use our warm up – instead of calm and focus activities I did quick heeling and turns which did keep him focused but probably got him more excited – which led to anticipation errors and increased excitement. I wish I had thought about this better – it would have been good to test our calm warm up, especially knowing that he will be even more excited when we’re in a new environment. Another part we need to work on is calm heeling – in an obedience ring we would have lost points for the forging. I’ll take that over him running off or being disinterested – but as I was telling people all day – it’s fun to handle a dog like this – but it’s also not really what you want! Stand at heel is another thing to work on – we’ve been working on our moving/jumping stand but not the sit to stand. Each time Griffin did a giant (adorable) leap and landed very crooked.
He is so adorable!
2 Comments
Laura, Lance and Vito · December 16, 2014 at 12:32 am
So glad you trialed with your boys and took video too!
What a pushy boy! Love it! Cute little delayed head downs on his downs too. Have you been doing some ipo recently on that heeling? 🙂
afmd7525 · December 16, 2014 at 2:57 am
Some of our instructors do IPO and it’s nice to watch but I really, really don’t want it. It’s adorable and it ‘feels’ good…. but it did NOT look that crazy to me at the time. Head downs – we want more of that for DOR and stays…he only did it there when I looked at him.
He is adorable!
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