Lance in 2014

Obedience
This past year our focus was definitely the obedience ring.  Apparently 2014 was also the year of not showing very often as we didn't do as many trials as planned, especially in the fall.

Lance did manage to earn his last 2 legs towards his UDX title and gained another 200 points to earn his OM2 title.  OTCH points were much smaller with only 14 points this year although that brings our current total up to 49 points and half way.

Due to the OTCH points earned in 2013 Lance was invited to the National Obedience Championship as the #3 corgi.  We had a blast, learned a lot, and loved watching all the great teams there.  It was quite the road trip to Pennsylvania and Gracie came along for the ride.  And recently we found out that Lance was again the #3 corgi in 2014 so we will get to go to Missouri next year!

Consistency still wasn't our strong suit this year.  In utility Lance had a streak of weird directed jumping failures that ranged from taking the wrong jump, to anticipating commands, to stopping early.  And towards the end of the year in utility we started having problems with our stand signal.  In Open the stay issue reared it's head again with Lance lying down about 1/3 of the shows and in the beginning of the year he held his sit but would stand or sit on the down.

We did quite a bit of proofing this year on all the exercises and Lance sailed through most of them pretty easily.  It's hard to say what exercises will break in the upcoming year!
In 2015 I plan to show a handful of times in the Open class, but mostly limit Lance to Utility.  I'm not giving up on the sit stay issue but clearly we have not found the answer to boost Lance's confidence in that class.  Sadly when Lance does manage to qualify in Open his scores are way higher than in utility.  Like most teams really.

We did increase our average slightly in scores.  Our of 7 Q's in Open our average is 196.5 and all but 2 higher than that.  In utility we only had 6 Q's and an average of 193.3 over the year.  Much room for improvement!

Agility
Sadly Lance showed even less in agility than in obedience.  NADAC shows in the area without traveling aren't very many and due to Lance's injury before one trial and another canceled trial it knocked our trialing way down.  By the end of August Lance had only competed in 2 days of NADAC.  My goal was to finish up his NATCH this year as all he really needed was 5 chances Q's and 2 regular Qs.  That didn't happen.  Lance only earned 1 Chances Q since our qualifying rate is not high in that class.

Lance and I did hit up 3 UKI trials this year and actually had a very high qualifying rate.  Quite the difference from NADAC and we did have a few moments where Lance went into orbit without me, but mostly he paid attention.  During the 1 day trial in December Lance managed to earn his Senior title and will move up to Champs next year.

He is starting to show his age somewhat in agility.  For the first time since we started trialing his average YPS is starting to slow down slightly.  Not a big drop, but certainly not getting any faster or maintaining his speed as much.  Lance will be 8yrs old next spring.

Tricks
No new tricks taught in the traditional sense.  But towards the end of the year I got some balance discs and now a peanut to work on some strength/balance exercises.  Lance loves working on them.

Goals for 2015
1.  Increase our average score in utility and in open (if we end up competing in open much).  We have loads of opportunity for  improvement in our qualifying rate in utility!!!
2. Keep problem solving ways to fix Lance's sit stay issue in a group of unknown dogs.
3. Earn Lance's NATCH in NADAC.