Griffin’s Obedience Run Through

Griffin and I had a good opportunity to an obedience run through at a new place last night. There are not many places around here offering that option, and this worked out really well because it was a brand-new-to-us location which would be a good test for how he might do at a trial.

Due to poor planning I didn’t pre-exercise him as much as I wanted, we only had time for a 30 minute walk/jog. We did practice a variation of our warm up routine, though at a trial I would probably have spent longer warming him up at the trial site.

We chose to do a Beginner Novice routine – as much as I tried to avoid it and want to just jump into Novice, Beginner Novice is probably better than not showing at all.

Heeling: We were the only BN team – so I let the host just call out a pattern (no need to set up signs just for me). Our go into the ring was great. Heeling not so great. The second half was better than the first.

Figure 8: Super sniffy before we started. Not so good after we started. Most likely would have been poor enough to not qualify.

Sit for Exam: Perfect? Maybe he moved one paw. I was very, very happy. He tried to jump on the ‘judge’ when she tried to talk to us outside the ring – I moved him away so that we wouldn’t “ruin” the new-person-experience once in the ring.

Sit Stay: Handler walks around the ring. Great. He moved his front feet very slightly but seemed comfortable and confident, even with action outside of the ring.

Recall:  He was set up with his back to the ring opening – he could have jumped the ring at any point and dogs were working on 3 sides. Slightly crooked front, but most importantly he did not think about leaving at all!

Transitions: Our entry into the ring was great, the transitions between heeling patterns were not so great. The second half transitions were quite nice. I used having him follow while I backed up, sticky nose touches, and heeling. The ‘judge’ wanted to talk to me a lot – and when I had a question about one piece of the routine (pick up the leash before or after “Exercise Finished” on the stay) she wanted to go and ask while I was in the ring which provided us with a further delay.

I hope she didn’t think I was too rude for mostly ignoring her when she tried to talk to me. I didn’t want to look away from Griffin very much or chat while he was out in the ring working – we also had a hard time as she and others tried to talk to me once we were out of the ring and doing our reward party ritual.

What did I learn: Heeling was not as great as I expected but he can successfully do the off leash parts. Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised as his rally scores dramatically increased once we went to off leash levels? I feel nervous without the leash!

Now what: Unfortunately the local, spring obedience options (and only local option until fall) fall on back to back weekends, which makes it hard to plan. I had considered doing one run each weekend, but now I’m thinking about doing just the second weekend (smaller location).  Then we’ll re-evaluate and drive as needed for additional opportunities.

In the meantime we’ll do more training:

• Heeling with distractions
• Heeling in new places both with and without warm ups
• Heeling with distractions in new places!
• Transitions between heeling
• Working on various focus/attention games
• We’ll go back to this place once more (won’t be as new though) before the trial
• Experiment with other warm up variations (more exercise)
• We’ll have one day of WCRL rally as a trial practice before then

I was more disappointed yesterday, but now a day later I have a plan. I think it’s a good choice for us to just go and try it.