Day #2
Back to the obedience trial with the crew. Vito had pretty much the exact opposite start to his day compared to Saturday so I knew our run would be different. Different bad or good was undetermined. Yesterday Vito had a calm and relaxed morning with a nice car ride. Today Vito woke up panting and neurotic and had a panicked car ride.
Vito in Pre-Open
I decided to use a toy to warm him up instead of food to try and channel neuroticness into drive. He was intense and borderline not thinking at first but then settled in a bit to work.
We heeled in the ring nicely and then just like yesterday he lost all focus once we were in the ring and next to the judge. Wouldn't sit and would definitely not look at me during the leash take off.
Heeling did go better than Saturday once started. A few look aways resulted in a lag but Vito got super happy on the fast time that followed and caught back up to me. Lost up on the about turn again as he glanced at the judge and ended up on the wrong side of me. But then a better finish. And I was able to get Vito to jump on me before setting up for the figure 8. Trying to hack up something on the figure 8 and a few more glances away while heeling.
The drop on recall and retrieves were neurotically fast and he slammed into me on 2 of the fronts. Wouldn't finish as he took my signal as an opportunity to look around real quick instead of as an actual cue to do something. Broad jump was iffy on cutting the corner but he didn't tick it or of course go visit the judge.
So we actually managed to qualify with a 181. Not the picture I want of our team in either attitude or precision. I feel that this was our worst obedience weekend in a long time (of mainly CDSP trials).
But it was thankfully an improvement over Saturday and he was able to turn some of that stress into effort for work. I would prefer no stress, but teaching him to stress UP and apply the energy to work is better than dwelling on the environment.
Lance in Utility
Only utility today. Lance was a bit spunky in our warmup so I was hoping for a nice animated run and fingers crossed for no crowd pleasing stunts.
Heeling was ON. The last 4 utility runs he has lost zero points on heeling errors! But like yesterday he managed to screw up signals. Today he sat as I got 90% across the ring. I believe that's the 3rd time he's done that in the last 7 utility runs. This time I gave him a verbal stand cue before running through the signal sequence.
Fronts and finishes continued to do well and there were no real other errors made. I used the cute baby shoes for the first time in an AKC trial this weekend (I've used them in CDSP a few times but no metal articles join them) and he did do a tiny bit of mouthing before selecting it and then fumbled the shoe on the way back to me.
Our passing rate in Utility has been pretty abysmal this year with the first half of the year having stupid little mistakes on go outs/direct jumping and this second half of the year being stupid mistakes on signals. Since i missed the deadline for the next 2 shows, our next trial will be end of October at our home club.
