Lance Fun Match

There was a fun match held tonight and I decided to enter Lance in Open and Rally. He went first in Rally-O and did amazing! He was extremely attentive and I only used about 3 treats during the course. We had to "redos", the first was on a halt-pivot right-halt where Lance decided to find "front" instead of heel when I pivoted. The 2nd redo was on walking backwards in heel which I really don't blame him for since he sucks at it anyway. After doing the course I ran with him to reward him with some canned dog food. Lance was very excited :) I was going to do it off leash, but forgot I had it in my hand still at the start. Oh well! At least he practiced being "good" and wasn't able to self-reinforce.

While warming up for Open Lance was more distracted. He saw me put the canned food down and just wanted to go over and sniff it. I was able to regain him before we actually had to go. Lance did "ok" on the off-leash heel. He definitely needed some extra cues to regain attention, but at least there were a few good stretches. And while the figure 8 wasn't good, it was probably the best figure 8 he has done in a ring in awhile. Besides the heeling everything else went wonderful. It was a little hard to gain his attention on the transitions so I tried doing some trickwork. But there were zero errors in the drop on recall, retrieve on the flat, and retrieve over the high jump. The broad jump also went really well considering that he really isn't ready for that exercise yet. I just gave him an extra cue to "front" after he sailed over it and Lance listened nicely. This was also the first time that Lance has done the long sit and down stays out of sight the entire time with zero rewards!

So wish us luck this weekend as we head down to a big show. It will be the biggest Lance has ever been to since there is also conformation being held. On Saturday we're entered in Advanced Rally-O and Sunday in Graduate Novice. My thoughts were that he would do better the first day and since his Rally class will actually count for Q's I decided to do it first. Since Graduate Novice isn't entirely a real class I hopefully won't be as stressed. And since it involves 3 jumps I'm hoping that if Lance can make it through the off leash heeling he will be fine!