Weekend Obedience Results
The event is over with results pretty much as expected. Spoiler alert- The Corgi failed signals both days. And the Toller was moderately brave.
Corgi
The corgi was quite a bit rusty on Saturday. The fact that he hasn't shown in ages and has barely practiced was obvious. Very excited to go in the ring but it took some time to develop teamwork. Our transitions between exercises were not so solid but got better as we went. Fronts and finishes were sloppy, skipped, or anticipated for the first 3 (both go outs, gloves). But then he started to nail them. Go outs were first and the first one was fantastic send, but the 2nd one he started to turn early. Moving stand was a little naughty on foot movement. Glove turn was actually good to #2. Dropped one of the articles. And then signals. Great heeling! Sat before I made it down to the end of the ring. I gave a down cue when ordered anyway, and he froze. So I cheered and called him to come to me where I lavished him with praise.
Day #2 he was actually able to do the down signal the very first time in the warmup ring so I bumped our chances of qualifying to 20%. Played some fast cookie toss signal games.
Order #1 so signals were first. Happy and precise heeling corgi again! Held his stand while I walked away this time! And then sat on the down. I immediately cheered and called him to come to me. Confused the judge, but he didn't excuse us :) Much better transition between exercises and much better fronts and finishes! Articles were interesting. Lance grabbed a wrong article and sprinted to me, then suddenly paused and dropped it to the ground and came in a bit closer, staring at me. I recued him to go find it expecting him to just grab and bring me the article at his feet (which I would have praised) but he grabbed it, took it back to the pile(!), researched, and brought me the correct one. Creative problem solver! Send #2 was fine.
A little naughty on the glove pivot and also moving his feet a bit on the stand for exam. Go outs I went into training mode again. Lance was a good boy and went to the perfect go out spot but started to turn before I told him to. So I recued him to "go touch" and sat him only after he whacked the gate. I was shocked to see him do the same thing on the 2nd send, so I again re-cued him to "touch" before the sit. Cheater Pants.
Oh and both days Lance had an issue with jumping :( Knocked the bar jump in the run through Friday. Ticked the bar jump on Saturday. And banged into the high jump today. I also noticed a large amount of goop in Lance's left eye today that he hasn't had in a long time. I hope his partial nerve paralysis isn't getting worse again. I checked and he is still able to blink out of it.
Toller
Vito's first time back to AKC since our excusal and fixation on the judge several months ago and our very first time in AKC Open.
He was doing fantastic in the warmup ring both days so I had hope.
Decent ring entrance but then couldn't stop from looking around. First exercise was the broad jump. Not a good start for Vito as he's never liked that exercise and then the judge stands right there. Sure enough he NQed us right off the bat as he jumps and then heads straight to the judge. I give him a cue to come and he fronts right away.
Figure 8 wasn't bad but he had to steal several glances at the judge/stewards and lagged a bit. I gave him a few words of praise during it. Would not jump up after it either :( A few more lagging and glances at the judge and the other ring on heeling. But he actually finished better than he started and was happy to jump up on me this time when finished.
Good drop on recall! And couldn't front again. Reoccurring theme for Vito in a trial.
Fairly good retrieves for Vito. Wasn't too happy about going back to the steward's corner for the retrieve on flat but still setup quickly.
Since we had already NQed on the broad I decided to skip the group stays. So Vito still has not done out of sight stays in a trial environment, but no good could come of "practicing" them today. You can't reward, you can't "correct," you can only add a little stress and risk practicing the wrong thing.
Overall I'm happy with both boys this weekend. Lance will gain precision back and was already starting to throughout the trial. Signals will be a project, one that it is extremely hard to replicate but one that we've successfully worked through before.
Vito is a good boy. I feel like we're stuck a bit. So much progress in CDSP, even if I don't use any food in the ring. And so much progress working in new parking lots and shops with WAY less acclimation time needed. And then the AKC environment has so much stress in the air he just feeds off. I think I am going to enter him again at our club's October trials. I was hoping heeling would be towards the end today as Vito did get more comfortable as went.
