Rally Trial Day 2

Day 2 was a little better than day 1. The advantage to Rally being in the afternoon versus in the morning with Obedience is that people were starting to pack their crates up and head out. Which meant that there was a little more room. Still not a ton, but every bit counts. And the atmosphere just felt more relaxed this time around. Maybe because there were less people. At any rate, first up again was Bess in Excellent.



The course was nice and I didn't do any major foibles. My only down fall was practicing downs with her before hand too much. I was trying to decide on whether to do the formal obedience down signal or to do the signal that I originally trained the dogs with. I decided to go with the latter because I've been using it longer. And while Bess understands the formal obedience signal, when she's in heel position and we have to do the moving down, it's just not as obvious and we've only been doing it for a couple of weeks now. So stick with what you know so you don't have to redo the station.;o) The downfall of practicing downs so much before hand was that she was anticipating the down. And for one of the stations I needed her to go from a sit to a stand to a down. Because we had JUST been practicing downs with two different signals, she went from a sit to a down, so we redid that station. Otherwise it was a good run. The competition was tougher today and we took third, but we definitely had a MUCH better run!


Next up was Heffner in Advanced. I was going in with more of a relaxed mind set, but also pretty much figured that I would be pulling him at some point during the run. I did some focus work with him before our run and then we were in. He actually started off pretty well and I started to get my hopes up. He even did a freaking left pivot! And with eye contact! Unfortunately we had to stop at station 7. It was a simple halt and then walk around your dog. The problem like yesterday was that Heffner decided to look any where but at me and refused to sit. I tried. I really tried. With several different voice inflections and volume levels, but no dice. So we unfortunately quit on a not so positive note. After the pivot I really thought that we might actually be able to make it through the whole course. But it wasn't to be. Oh well.

I do have some other exciting news to share!! I just got back from the first official meeting of our new drill team!!! Woo hoo!!! There are going to be four great danes, a tibetan mastiff, and a bullmastiff (once I send her the group invite). Tonight was an organisational meeting to get things started and figure out which direction we are wanting to go. At the moment, we are going to go in the direction of a musical freestyle drill team, with the eventual aim of also doing some formal obedience drill team work. I think it's going to be a TON of fun! We're going to have our first get together with the dogs next Saturday to start practicing some basic moves and get a feel for how all the dogs and people are going to jive together. I'm REALLY excited!!


I hope that everyone had a great weekend and here's hoping that tomorrow won't be a killer Monday!