Gidget and I participated in our first AKC obedience trial this past weekend. I was super nervous! Thankfully there was a friendly face at the novice ring (thanks Cyndi!) The judge was super nice too. We were a little too ready to go, the judge had to remind me to wait to enter the ring til she called me in, oops! Gidget seemed super excited, maybe she was just more awake in the morning, or she may have been very interested in leaving the nearby exit door. Whatever it was, this was not the same dog I had at our walk through held in the same location, same ring even, a while back. That dog lagged and sniffed, this dog forged and wasn't even close to heeling half the time. She completely ignored a halt too. Between the on leash heeling and the figure 8, the judge suggested I loosen up the leash some (she really was nice and helpful). I wasn't used to how Gidget was working with me, plus nerves, so the leash had been tight for most of the exercise. The figure 8 went a tiny bit better, Gidget got the halts, the leash was looser, but it still wasn't very pretty. Skipping to the off leash heeling (get the bad stuff over with), it wasn't pretty at all! She even left me by a good 10+ feet in the direction of the door. In all this ugly heeling Gidget did have a few brief moments of being right on, where I truly felt connected with her. When I say brief though, I really mean brief.
On to the good stuff! Gidget's stand for exam and recall were perfect! I didn't think to check to see what our score was so I don't know that they were really perfect, but in my eyes they couldn't have been any better! I just remember thinking, "Look how straight she sat!" during our recall.
So after all that messy heeling I thought for sure that was an NQ, but it was time for the stays. The sit stay was going just fine until I was about one foot in front of her on the return, she stood up. The down stay was one more perfect exercise! Next time I'll have to remember to send her positive thoughts through both stays, "Good Gidget, stay right there, good girl..." I'm sure that's why her down stay was perfect!
The judge read off the qualifying teams after the stays... we were the only ones to NQ :( Not that I was surprised at this point. The judge came up to me afterwards and asked if I knew why we didn't qualify. I thought for sure it was the horrible heeling, but no, we had qualified for the individual exercises, lots and lots of points off, but qualified. No, it was that Gidget had stood up before I got back into heel position during the sit stay! One tiny little thing had kept us from qualifying. Though had we had perfect stays, I would have questioned a Q.
I was feeling kind of emotional when we were all done. Sure I was a little bummed, but I think it was really just the relief of it being done. I had been really really nervous! More so than Gidget's first agility trial I think. Anyways, I was kind of in a hurry to get out of there, but was pleasantly surprised that two strangers separately stopped me to ask how we did and encouraged me to stick with it. I've always heard that obedience crowds can be iffy, I'm really glad I got to see the really good part of the crowd!
So lots for Gidget and I to work on. Especially need some sit stay proofing and lots of heel work! Hopefully some more walk throughs in new locations will be in our future. Happy agil... er... obedience!
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