USRVDTC Rally Day 1

Day one of the Rally trial went great. Dare was first dog in her class, and despite my nerves, she did fantastic. She had a bobble at one station where she was to come into front and then finish right. She hesitated to sit, like she was confused about what exercise we were doing, but she did it, and I think we must have only lost a point or two. After that, it went really well.

When we went and checked the scores, she had a 98! Woohoo! There ended up being three dogs with a score of 98 when the class finished, so we were all in a tie for first place. But they break the tie by time, and we weren't as fast as the Border Collie, so we got second place. But what an awesome way to start the weekend. :-) Here's the video.

Weaving Update

It's long overdue as always, but here's an update on how Dare's weave training is progressing. The last time I posted, we had closed the channel, but we still had grid guides on all the poles.

Since then we've been able to exchange all the grid guides for less visual weave wires, and now we're in the process of removing those one by one. You can see the progression in the videos.



Now with more wires, less grids...



Grids only at the entries, and working on me in various positions...



With only 7 wires on the twelve poles, (note the sneaky little spin move to get the treats that she fakes me out with at the beginning) LOL



And now down to 5 wires...



That's where we are this week. :-)

A Thousand Words

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. :-)

Copy Cats

So, Dare and I are just a couple of big copy cats, but I just had to try to teach Dare Ricky's suitcase trick. I hope he doesn't mind that we copied him. :-) Here's what we've got.




Thanks for the inspiration Ricky! We sure are having fun with this one. :-)

Now and Then

My friend reminded me that today is the year anniversary of when we went to Florida and picked Dare up. I couldn't resist uploading some of the video we took of her the day we picked her up and our first night at the hotel. I couldn't believe how confident and curious she was. I guess that's a big compliment to her breeder Judy Guaraldo. Dare has been exactly what I hoped for, from day one. :-)





Fast forward one year and here's what we're up to. We're another week into our weave training. Well, minus the long weekend we were gone. Anyway, Dare is now weaving straight poles, no channel. I have also opened up the grids, so it's not a complete closed path through the weaves. She's doing great! I'm going to keep working this week on different entries and varying my position, before I start taking off the grid guides and replacing them with the less conspicuous wires. At any rate, here is a video from this morning, (please ignore the lovely pajama pants). LOL

Weaving Dare

Dare has been a busy girl. In addition to her jump training, she just started her weaves too.

I spent a lot of time toying with the idea of training Dare using Susan Garrett's 2x2 method. I love the thought of the dogs figuring it out on their own, and having such a good idea of how to find the entrance. However, even after watching the Susan Garrett DVD, I don't think I have the confidence to try to train it. It's one of those methods where...if I thought I could get some help when I got stuck at a certain point, maybe I'd feel more inclined to try it. Since I don't really have anyone close to help me through the process though, I think I'll stick with something that I understand more easily. I figure I can spot if my dog is struggling because I've moved the channels in too quickly, or started removing guides too soon, etc. LOL

So, we started about a week and a half ago or so. here is video of her first day, channels fully open.



And a few days later, you can see the channels are closing just a little.



and yesterday...the channel is a little closer again, and I'm trying to vary my position in relation to her weaving. I want to be able to send her ahead of me, run along side and also be able to be in front.



I'm also really making an effort to use both food and toys as a reward. I tend to be more comfortable with the treat reward. I think that part of it is because I'm not that good at tossing a toy in the right spot. LOL (you'll see an example of my poor tossing skills in the first video). I've actually been out there practicing my tossing of the toy when we're not training to try to improve. Poor Dare, she's just got a dork of a mom to contend with sometimes. She's doing really well though. I'm really pleased with her progress.