CD Here We Come!

Gidget and I attended our 2nd obedience trial ever at TCOTC today.  We just got home half an hour or so ago actually.  Last night we went to the run and done and got to do two lovely walk throughs with treats plus some extra play time in the ring.  The fun we had yesterday definitely helped today!

Not much to say for our run today except we qualified!  2nd place out of 5 dogs, though the 1st place dog already had his title, show off :).  We ended up with 186.5 points.  Gidget's heeling was way better than our last attempt, but that's still where we lost the most points, 9ish between the on and off leash heeling.  Obviously she heeled better at the run and done, I had treats on me and wasn't crazy nervous!  1 point off on our figure 8 and a perfect stand for exam, no complaints there!  The rest of our points off came from the recall, she stood up a millisecond before I called her and her front was sloppy, as usual.  Her stays were perfect!  I couldn't be prouder of my pup!

We've been working on having more fun with our heeling and making her responsible for getting into position.  When we're practicing I pretty much only lose her after giving her a treat, so I give her a treat and run away.  Give her another treat when she catches up and run away again.  Mixing that up with turns, circles, halts, downs, slow, fast, and the occasional skipping (me not her) makes it lots of fun.  Playing like this has helped us a ton!  We do a lot of short, fun, get into heel position work too where Gidget starts in heel position and I leap, hop, tip toe, skip, jump, run, or sometimes walk away in every direction and call her to heel.  Both dogs really seem to like this game.  Of course it just occurred to me last night that I need to be doing this with front too.  Maybe, just maybe, that will improve our recalls.  I've enjoyed improving Gidget's obedience skills (Gracie's too!) mostly in just the last month and a half.  I hope we keep improving!  More game ideas to keep our training fresh are welcome!  Not sure when our next trial will be, but I hope to get our CD this year, and maybe even start open (scary!)  Happy obedience!