First Ring Entrances!

The local agility community had a huge fundraiser this past Saturday to help out an exhibitor.  Agility, obedience, rally, and nose work all available in the same place on one day!  I don't think that has ever happened before!

The tollers each did 2 runs in agility but before that Zumi had 1 run in the obedience side.  I chose not to do a formal run through despite my curiosity on how Zumi would do with the full exercises.  Instead, I chose to grasp the great opportunity to work on some of our Ring Confidence exercises.
Entering the ring with focus, setting up, leash removals, and finally the talking of the judge.  This was Zumi's first time getting to work on this in a formal type setting.  She has done these exercises a (sad and tiny) handful of times at our club with friends.  And Zumi's age and experience with it showed.  She was quite a bit more distracted then I thought she would be.  And very, very interested in our judge!  Especially the talking!  Our lovely judge was very helpful and ironically enough was also the real judge when Zumi did WCRL rally last month.

Here is her full, unedited, session.



Zumi actually toller squeals trying to get in the ring at first!  My first goal was getting in with focus and being able to sit at heel.  If this was too hard I would have backed up and gotten rid of the setup.

At the 1min mark I add in setting up and removing the leash.  Handing off the leash went well, although I realized setting up so the judge was on my right vs the left would have been easier to keep full eye contact.

At 2:30 I have our judge work on moving and talking.  Very hard for the Duck!!
And finally at 3.15 I add the first bits of heelwork in.

Overall I'm thrilled with how she did, even if I was a bit surprised at the difficulty.  She recovered quickly and made some great decisions out there.  I need to do a LOT more of this before I take her into the obedience ring.  Still quite a bit more before we do any other rally than WCRL (where food is allowed) but the ability to praise is a nice bridge.

I wish I had signed up for another obedience run before having to move to agility!  Agility was fun, but she is much further along there with her ability to handle the ring distractions and focus on her job.  Still, it was nice to get her on different equipment again!