Flying Poodles

Exposing the gaps in training…

I took the girls to a CPE trial yesterday. There were day-of-trial entries, so I didn’t have to decide a month ago to go. In fact, I wasn’t sure I was going until Saturday night when I packed the car.

Wilsonville Memorial Park: nice venue, good grass. We got lucky with the weather, cool and cloudy but not rainy until around 2 when the sun came out and we all got very warm very quickly.

Dancer got herself three Qs: Jumpers, Full House, and Jackpot. Jackpot is a point-earning game where you get points in an opening and then do a distance-challenge close; she did very well. Full House is a strange game, peculiar to CPE, in which you have to get three jumps (1 point each), two round challenges (tire jump, tunnels) (3 points each), and one joker (in this case, it was a two jump sequence or the weaves) (five points each). And you have to accrue enough points to qualify at the class level. Dancer did a lovely set of weaves, nailing a difficult entrance. And jumpers was jumpers; Dancer was, as usual in jumpers, focused and fast. Dancer took first place in class–only dog in class–in all three. She was in level 1, which was mostly baby dogs. Level 1 CPE has no teeter and no weaves, so it was nice for her.

Elly held her startline stay! She was entered in snooker and standard, and she held her stay in both! Her snooker run was wonderful, all four obstacles. She backjumped the second red, and that was that. But she was having so much fun, and looked so healthy and happy; it was a joy to be out there with her.

Now for the exposed gaps:
Well, it turns out I never trained Elly to ignore flying insects, especially wasps. There were wasps everywhere–that time of the summer–and she kept trying to chase them–she was jumping in the air trying to bite them! Good thing she didn’t succeed. So that made a mess of our standard run, where there were wasps flying around her as she held her startline stay… NOTE: she held it anyway!

And Dancer clearly thinks that she doesn’t have to do contacts at a trial. I’ve been getting great contacts in practice–but not at the trial. I have a plan:

• try to get to some fun matches where I can train the contact there
• add a whole new verbal command to the contact behavior. Jay suggests BRAKE since I know I’ve never used that word to mean anything else.

I think we look pretty good in this picture....