Monday, December 26, 2011

On the first day after Christmas

Hope everyone had a great Christmas. We had some fun, especially Koira, who loves ripping open packages. 

Today, the Gym where we have flyball practice was hosting an obedience/rally fun match. Along with two others from flyball, I decided to take my dogs and try it out.

I did a Beginner Novice run with Pallo. He had no brain. I pretty much just had to reward him for giving me attention and not worry about anything other than that. He has a much better Stand for Exam than Sit for Exam, and a better Sit-stay and Down-stay if I don't walk around the edges of the ring during it. I think Beginner Novice is not for us, and that we need to do a lot of work on heeling and attention before we even try venturing into an actual competition ring.

Koira was a whole different story. Originally I was just going to do a single Rally run with her, but ended up doing the Beginner Novice for fun first. She did pretty good, a bit jumpy starting out on the heeling. Her biggest issue was with the stays, which didn't have at all. 

Rally came around and was a blast! I walked the course twice, then me and Koira were the third pair into the ring. The only real issues we had with anything was the left turn to slow pace, which was pretty close together. Koira seemed to think that the combination of turning then slowing down meant I wanted her to heel on the right instead of the left. The "judge" for Rally told us at the end of the run that we would have gotten a very high score for the run.

Of course, I was holding treats in my hand... But, I gave in to the temptation and did a second run through of the Rally course, this time with no treats in my hand (though they were in my pocket). Koira did just about the same, maybe a little farther away on her fronts in the 1-2-3 steps back, call front, but really good with everything else. She did have the same issue with the left turn to slow pace change though, wanting to switch over to the right side, so I'll have to figure out what I'm doing to cause that.

The long and short of it is, though, that I think I am ready to try out a real Rally trial with her. The next one in the area is at the Rose City Classic in Portland, which is happening in late January and closes on the 4th, so I'll have to make a decision soon.

4 comments:

  1. Oh, yay! Rally is so fun. I only took a class with Glacier, but one day would like to do it with a "pet" dog instead of my guide dog. LOL Which pocket/hand are your treats in? Is she circling around because the goodies are on the right side? I really don't know much about it though-so don't listen to me. :)

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  2. Thank you so much for giving us an award. I'm sorry that I am so late responding.

    Koira and Pallo are adorable! They always look so happy.

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  3. This is such a good and hard question. I'm trying to get Astro ready for Rally. I'm thinking of going to some matches next month. We need lots of practice with distractions. The nice thing about Rally is the dog doesn't have to be 100% perfect. I bet Koira would do great.

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