Blogmas Day 10 - First Dog Show!

This little dude had his first dog show today!  And it went.  The pluses, he was great in his crate and I still think he's the cutest dog.  The minuses, I didn't prepare him enough for the ring. :-/ To be honest, I thought we could sort of wing our way through it.  He's generally fine with me hand stacking him.  He has started figuring out free stacking.  But I have definitely not had enough people go over him like a judge would.  And boy howdy was he interested in EVERYTHING that was going on around the ring.  I thought an hour of acclimation should settle him down before ring time.  Not quite.  I have a different game plan for tomorrow.

His breeder is at the show and tomorrow morning she's going to help go over him a few times before the show starts, just to get him practicing holding still for the judge.  I don't even care if hes stacked properly, I just need him to roughly hold still.

I'm also pretty much going to have him out of his crate for the full hour prior to our ring time and working him.  Today I didn't want to have him out for too much time, because I didn't want him to get overly tired, bored, or disinterested in what was going on.  That was not remotely a problem.  He is interested, fascinated and wanting to check everything out.  Even after being on the show grounds for three hours.  Okay little dude, I read you loud and clear, you are the canine equivalent of an extrovert; this kind of commotion and action energizes you versus drains you.  He was very excited any time he saw a puppy of any breed.  He very much wanted to play and was a pretty cute goober at trying to entice other puppies to play from his short leash.

We did a gift exchange after our ring time and after people had put away whatever gear they were wanting to put away.  I decided to leave him in his soft crate to see how he continued to do with everything going on around him.  Not a problem.  He was interested, but did lay down and watch everything going on around him.  When I took him out to collapse the crate, I decided to do a little free stacking with him and he did really well.  Calm, focused and paying attention to his feet.  Which was a lot more than he was doing in the ring.

We have much to work on, but this was his first show and there's no pressure on us to be perfect right away.  With some actual training, he'll get there.  And with a better game plan of how to hopefully get and keep him engaged with me, I'm hoping tomorrow will be a better day.

Happy December 10th!