WSOTC Spring Obedience Trial 2015

Soooooo close to April 1 and Easter Sunday! I have high hopes for this week. :)

Sunday was a great dog day. My mom and I went to the WSOTC Spring Obedience Trial up in Monroe. We could only do Sunday with my current work schedule. It was the first time for Maggie (mini Aussie) to ever be in the official show ring (first time for my mom as well) and I was hoping to break Nim's "Not Qualifying" (NQ) rally obedience curse.

The venue is fun. No conformation at this show and at this point more and more I am going to obedience trials in which I know the people to hang with and the people that need space. :)

There were 3 obedience rings strung together.

And the rally ring was in a corner by itself. However across the left alley is one of the obedience rings. For some dogs, the motion of the dogs across the way is a distraction.

Nim as always found this to be some quality people watching.

I super lucked out, and my Rally Obedience run was before my Beginning Novice run. In Rally obedience you can talk like crazy. In Beginner Novice this is more traditional obedience and you need to be quiet. I was even more lucky that Nim got the same judge and the was in the same ring for both.

Unfortunately for mom and I, the run order for Rally Obedience put us one after another. I went in first, and as I was exiting the ring, mom went in second. So we couldn't video each other.

Maggie held her own, but she was going to be damned if she was going to sit in front of mom with her back to any of the riff-raff behind her. They ended up NQ'ing, but it was a solid first run with a lot of obvious demonstrations that she had been training for this.

Nim and I did end up qualifying and we have finally got our second leg! He did some beautiful work. He was swinging a bit wide to check out other distractions in the area and our most common points lost was "out of position." I was so happy with him.

Both dogs were very sedate after their first run in the ring.

What mom and I both realized is that we probably should have walked both dogs around a lot more before their Rally runs. Even for me, when I first get to those shows it takes me a while to really take everything in and I just don't feel like walking him around very much. I don't think drilling the dogs really helps, but some basic attention in the area is a good idea.

I had some down time between Rally and Beginner Novice and I did finally start to get nervous. I knew where Nim's hiccups are (as well as mine) and I wanted to be really clear in my mind my best action plan to deal with them.

Thankfully we also qualified in our Beginner Novice run! I was actually able to remember a training issue I was having and correct for it under show stress which is often hard to do.

It is with some reservation that I am posting the video of our run. I am super proud of the run, my reservation is that there is a bad handler correction in the run that not only sets a bad example, but I just don't like seeing it. That being said, it is also a great learning video and like it or not, that is my bad correction that I need to work on not repeating. What you don't hear in the video is the judge gives me a deserved verbal warning on that correction as well. Corrections don't go over well in any obedience trials and tend to get you excused.

2nd Beginner Novice Leg/WSOTC 2015

Enjoy. :)