ASCA Rally Debut

Yesterday was Dare's first official trial of any kind. Utah held it's first ASCA Rally Obedience trial and I thought it would be a great thing for Dare and I to try. We had a great time! There were about 17 dogs in our class, which is pretty big for ASCA in our area. Since this was the first Rally trial ASCA has held here, there were very experienced dogs mixed in with the total newbies. I figured it would be an accomplishment if we were even able to qualify, but if not it would be good experience anyway.

Well...Dare not only qualified, she tied for first place with a 199 out of 200! The tie is broken by the fastest time, so we ended up with second place. I'm still just walking around on cloud nine. What a nice way to debut! Here's the video:




I can see lots of footwork errors on my part and I think that our friend that we train with will still have lots of little hints to improve our heeling, but all in
all, Dare was awesome. :-) If you watch close you can see where just before the figure eight station, Dare hops up and gets her leash tangled between her legs. The judge let me fix that though, and apparently didn't deduct any points. So, that was nice.

One of our friends was nice enough to not only video, but also to take some still pictures for us too. Thanks Katie!!!



Oh, and I almost forgot. The really cool thing about ASCA's Rally program is that if you get a score of 195 or higher, you get what they call an "X" Q. If you get all three of you Q's that way, instead of the regular RN title, you get a RNX title. Isn't that fun! It's definitely something to work towards. :-)