Obedience: The girls and I spent a Sat. morning at a CDSP trial with each dog having one run each. Gidget was up first in Nov C. She was awesome again, which is even more impressive since it was a location she'd only been to once before. She even got the same score as last time, 197.5, but instead of coming in 1st like last time, she came in 4th. There were some really awesome teams there! 1st place got 199, 2nd got 198.5, 3rd got 198, and Gidget was 4th. I didn't look at the score sheet, but my general feeling is that she's losing points in our heeling at the start. It's like she's using that as a warm up. I do warm up with her before we go in the ring, we just need some work getting her to realize that she needs to be on right when we enter the ring, not after the first exercise.
Gracie's turn in Nov B wasn't so pretty. She'd never been to this location before and their flooring is turf-like. Gracie spent most of our heeling trying to stop and sniff the floor. Her figure 8 was better but still not great. As usual she was miss wiggles for her moving stand and exam, but she passed it. I can't complain too much about her recall and her stay though. She finished with a 187.5 and 1st place. Gidget started out looking similar to how Gracie is doing in obedience so far, so I'm not too concerned that she'll eventually catch up.
Agility: We headed down to La Crosse for an agility day with both dogs. It was a one little thing kind of day. JWW was up first. Both girls had the same refusal. I didn't turn them tight enough over the jump before the weaves and they missed the entry. Gracie had a second refusal but I'm not sure what it was. I was really pleased with how both girls ran this course, especially Gidget. Even with the weave redoes they both had pretty decent times. Gidget started off a little unfocused but quickly kicked it into gear. Had she not missed the weave entry she might of hit 5 YPS she was so fast! Unfortunately no video for Gracie, but here is Gidget's:
Standard was up next. Again one little thing for both, just not the same thing this time. Gracie popped out at the end of the weaves so we had to redo that. Gidget came back out of the chute after I rear crossed it. I should have known better, she's had chute issues in the past, why would she be ok with me crossing behind her while she's in there? Something to work on. I was very pleased with the rest of her run! Gracie's run was a little rough. She was a little slow on her contacts and wouldn't lay down on the table, plus popping out of the weaves. I take that as stress since she ran wonderfully in practice on Thur. Maybe Gracie's going through some of the same motivation issues Gidget went through a few years ago, or her anal glands are bothering her more than she's letting on. Only got the end of Gracie's run, camera issues, but here's that and Gidget's run:
Time 2 beat was up last, but just for Gracie. It only took all day, but she finally got her weaves on the first try. She was even slower on the teeter this time, but otherwise she ran nicely and got 1st place and 10 points! We're over half way to her title!
It was fun running both girls at this small trial, but I definitely prefer not running them on the same day. It's so much easier being able to focus on how one dog runs at a time. I might still run both dogs when we go to La Crosse, but for trials close to home, I'll keep them separate.
Nose Work: Gidget and I went to an ORT (odor recognition test) last night. She got to test for birch. It was a pretty easy deal. We waited in our car for Gidget's turn. There was a practice station to stop at before going into the test. Gidget took a minute to focus there (it was outside) but figured it out plenty quick. Then we went inside and dried off our feet before going into the testing room. An ORT consists of 11 blank boxes and one box that looks identical but has the odor in it all lined up in two rows. I got Gidget pointed in the right direction and off we went. We headed down the left row and Gidget passed them all pretty quickly. I don't think she was quite working yet, just moving. We got to the end of the row where Gidget often stops and looks at me in a way that can be easily mistaken as an alert. Thankfully she didn't do this here, she moved forward like she wanted to check out the rest of the room and visit. So I turned myself so that the rest of the boxes were more obvious to her and she headed down that row. Part way down the row she stopped and made a sharp turn back to one of the boxes. She had caught sent! She bounced back and forth between a couple boxes and then looked up at me, but she didn't look convinced so we moved on. Good thing I didn't think that was it, because I would have been wrong. Turns out she was catching scent bouncing off those boxes from the actual odor box behind me. I was blocking the path to the source so Gidget couldn't follow it. We finished the second row and started back down the first row. This time when Gidget's head snapped to a box and she looked up at me it was the real thing. She looked much more convinced this time and looked back and forth between me and the box like she was insisting. So I called, "Alert" and everyone in the room cheered! We passed our first ORT, she had found the box in 24 seconds! We are now eligible to compete in the first level of nose work trials. We just have to wait for one to be held around here. Then we have to do two more ORTs, one for anise and one for clove. Those are the scents used in levels 2 and 3.
Now we have no more trials until the end of June when the girls each have their own agility trials. And there will be 3 agility trials there too. TDAA for Gidget, AKC for Gracie, and AKC for Gidget. No obedience until July. Then who knows what! Happy trialing!
