WCRL March Trial

Level 3 Blaze! photo by nm

We did our first WCRL rally trial of the year today. Three trials in one day – I judged a whole trial (my first time with Level 3), ran Griffin in all 9 classes and Blaze in two! Because all of my hosting and judging responsibilities my dogs didn’t get a good warm up or even the planned exercise that morning.

I had planned to enter Griffin in all 9 classes (3 levels, 3 trials). WCRL is interesting because judges can be evaluated on their courses by another present judge – though we aren’t eligible for placement on our own courses (which makes sense).

Blaze: At the last minute I decided to add Blaze into Level 3. After our last trial I had debated about the sportsmanship of entering him with a 0″ jump height. Our March vet eye exam did show his cataracts have progressed somewhat and will impact his depth perception – so that made me feel okay with a 0″ jump. We tried – and got our Level 3 title!!!  I didn’t think it was going to happen – he’s now 14 years + 1 month old!  We had a 188 which was reasonable, especially as we didn’t even try the bonus. He was so happy that we did a level one run later and he was more tired but did fight me the rest of the day – every time I took out Griffin, Blaze was sure he should come too.

Griffin Overall: He had a great day  – even without proper warm ups (or maybe because of that?) we had all scores 204+ out of a maximum of 210 points. Best things? His fronts, his retrieves, and 0 running away!

Griffin’s Training List:

• Position changes – specifically his down. He was not always all the way down. He was possibly the reason the other judges mentioned in briefings that dogs needed to go all the way down. This has been a more recent problem area.
• Heeling – he was bumping me so much. The judges didn’t seem to score it or his hair hid it. But I know we lost points for me tripping over him at one point. I would way rather this problem than him running off and sniffing though! I know exercise and a warm up would have (likely) made a difference here.

Things that are improved: No running away! Horray!  He was very attentive and responsive.  He only anticipated cues once. His right turns (90 degrees, 180, 270, 360’s) were really great – I lost 5 points on a course because I did a 360 the wrong way, I was so excited about this new skill!

Results: All our scores were great. We had two perfect scores! We got our ARCH (Rally Champion) which requires a number of points that we easily got and qualifying in both Level 1 and 2 in the same trial. Looking back at our results, we actually finished this in 2 days of trialing/5 trials.  It will be interesting to see if we can continue to progress at this rate!  We also finished his Level 3 title which was exciting too.

Misc: We have a great ring crew and very enthusiastic participants. I wish we had better ways to build interest in our students. We primarily started hosting events to give students a good trialing opportunity but it’s been harder to create the interest than we initially expected.

Hopefully we’ll do our next event in May and Viktor will be old enough to participate then if he’s ready. We’ll see how that goes!

Goals for me:

• After the next trial I should be able to finish my paperwork and be a full judge!
• I want to be more focused during the walk through – I get bored easily and am not as careful as I should be. “It’s just rally” – but I need to practice the focus I will need for obedience and agility. Most of our points lost are due to handler errors vs. training weakness
• Find a better course design system. I have a good program for AKC courses (the style used when I judge 4-H), but the WCRL programs that we were given are not very good and are quite hard to use. if this is easier, I will procrastinate less and do a better job designing courses.