First Novice Obedience Trial

Ducky had her very first time in novice obedience on Saturday!  We did 2 novice runs in CDSP where I felt brave enough to enter her due to the allowance of food between exercises and extra praise.  Technically this was her 2nd time in the obedience ring as I did the last minute entry a few months ago with Starters Novice at the CDSP trial.

The first trials she blew me away.  Confident ring entrance and beautiful heeling, just a tad forged in my opinion.  Happily played with me in between all exercises.  No issue with being interested in the stewards on the figure 8.  Actually we ended up with a "bonus" figure 8 as both teh judge and I forgot that it's off leash in CDSP so we had to re do it.  The exercise I was worried the most about, the moving stand, went beautifully as well.  Not even a glance at the judge during the brief touch.
Nailed her front over the jump (hard for her even in practice to collect herself!) and just didn't complete her finish properly.
Zumi ended up with a generous 199 and high in trial.

Trial #2 was a few hours later and I made a slight error in judgement before her run.  The CDSP ring and the WCRL rally rings were looking like they were going to start at the same time (the boys were in rally) and I kept looking back and forth to see if I should move Zumi down to the end of the obedience order or keep her where she was.  At the last minute I decided it would be easier if I ran her first so I could then fully concentrate on getting Vito prepared.  I ran to get Ducky out of her crate and warm her up.  I had a decent amount of time but I think she could have used more to settle her in and I'm sure my adrenaline was higher.

Zumi started to fixate on the nice steward (in a happy really want to greet way at least!) just moments before we were to enter the ring.  I waited a little bit after the judged called us, but she mentally wasn't where I needed her to be on entering the ring.  Thankfully she does have a trained squish behavior and that really did help get her to move with energy and focus past the steward and into the ring itself.  Then she had a few more glances at the audience in general and a bigger look at the walking steward as we passed each other, resulting in a poor halt.  For the most part I was proud to see how she was able to control herself and mostly focus.  In the first trial I don't think I gave any praise during the heeling (as is allowed in CDSP) but this second run I gave several words of praise during both the heeling pattern and figure 8 as I could feel that while she was doing a pretty good job of focusing her energy level was a bit lower.  This run she also slammed me on the recall, but did a better finish.
The judge scored us a 196 for her 2nd leg.