Griffin’s First Obedience Match

Griffin and I are working towards competition obedience. We did our first match (practice trial) at an obedience club last night. If I had planned a little better, I would have entered Viktor too!  Griffin and I missed the deadline for the trial this weekend because I had lost my checkbook but were able to attend the Friday night match.  I know there are different types of AKC type matches, this one was labeled a “C” match but maybe wasn’t actually an official one? TWe saw all sorts of equipment, including things that I thought wasn’t allowed on AKC trial grounds.  This also meant we could have food or toys in the ring – I wasn’t prepared for that either!

Warm Up: We haven’t been to an (agility/anything away from the training center) trial in 14+ months now. This was the best warm up ever!  He was so calm and patient and responsive – other than wanting water.  I was very happy with how he warmed up and was outside the ring.

Puppy picture.

Heeling: Just like at the run through a few weeks ago – not so great (though better than before). He was sniffy, disengaged at moments and just not heeling for most of it. Afterwards I did backwards walking heeling to transition him to the next exercise – it seemed like the two helper ‘posts’ weren’t ever going to come in – I eventually prompted the judge.

Figure 8:  The ‘judge’ came very close while we were transitioning to this exercise and he did jump on her. During the actual exercise he didn’t jump on her or the posts! He was distracted by things happening in the next ring but stayed on task, some pieces of good heeling.

Sit for Exam: Brand new person. Great!

Stay, Walk Around Ring:  Great – and I felt sure he would stay.

Recall: Slightly crooked, but no thoughts of running off with the leash off.

Misc Thoughts:

• Good news – this was  lot like the match – we have consistent problems (easier to fix than many different problems).  Bad news – same problem even with some work in between.
• I wish I had also done the rally run through. And maybe even Novice or Open.  I wonder if he would have been different with more ring time. I didn’t know what to expect. All the dogs who went early were very formal. Later in the evening runs were less formal.
• Overall was much less formal than I expected  –  I definitely will go again to give us experience.
• Lots of goldens!
• Like we were told at a seminar before, we don’t need to be perfect. We just need to be good enough to pass and, especially at higher levels, it’s about having the least mistakes.  We saw lots of teams who will be competing this weekend. Many of them had errors. We don’t have to be perfect!
• I wish I had a better plan for feeding in the ring – I wasn’t prepared for that option.
• Viktor and I need to get busy – he was great out in the parking lot. We saw some young dogs entered – an 9 and 11 month old dogs doing open level practice and a decent job of it!

Plan:

• More going to new places
• Maybe getting into a class
• Heeling work, including working on adding the cue
• Heeling with no distractions as the distraction
• Warm up in one area, work in another
• Train my puppy