Date Night with Ein

In less than two weeks is our next WCR trial, and it is a special trial because it will be our friends Donna, Luna and Sly's first ever rally-o trial!  I dropped by her place tonight to do another rally-o practice session, becaues there is a lot of rule learning and experience to be gained from walking actual rally courses.  

Since Perri had a Rally-O class later in the evening, I brought Ein in to be my practice dog.  It was good to get Ein out, to get Ein walking a course.  I printed off an old course map from our second ever WCR trial and rebuilt the rally course from that.  I did the course twice with Ein, the first time on leash.  The second time off leash.  It is amazing to me, still, how much his confidence saps when that leash is removed.  It never pulls tight when it is attached, yet when I take it off - he scatters.  Well, he did not scatter too badly tonight, but still.  There was the lagging and edge of nerviness.  I tried my hardest to keep my shoulders from turning back towards Ein and he really did stay with me.  I did lose him on the cone circling (sans leash), but hey.  That's not the end of the world and it was better than constantly turning into him and pushing him back!

And since it was in a horse barn, we had an enormous amount of room and cozy footing to play tennis ball.  Ein was absolutely in his glory, enjoying playing ball and rally-o with his girl.  It was such a fun night with my little red!