Molly went first in P2 Jumpers...and locked onto a wrong course tunnel.
For Perri....we are working on some new things. I have mentioned Perri's harness aversion in prior posts. Perri does not like things going over her head. And she really does not like things going off of her head either. At the CPE trial two weeks ago I was able to get some arousal into Perri but then had to bring her back down to remove her martingale slip lead. I thought...what if I just used a snap collar so that it can just fall off of her neck rather than the "event" of a leash being pulled off? Today we tried that. I did some things I do to get Perri "fired up" (asking where "daddy" and "daphnee" are - two of her favorite friends on earth.) and making weird buzzing sounds. And then we approached the start line with her jumping up on me and happy. And I simply unclipped the collar and ran. No pulling off of a collar over her head.
This may be the key to Perri being more consistent in the ring. We had a nice Jumpers run (her Performance Jumpers title run actually) with some 180's in the ring. I paid careful attention to planting myself when cueing her over the 180 rather than drifting backwards and encouraging her tendency to drift wide. A 21 second run and really really great attitude for Perri! I am trying so hard to understand my girl and support her.
Standard was next. Molly had a really nice run. She missed the weave entry and I took some time to pull her back around and get a small bit of distance from the weaves and proceed. We were clean but four seconds over time. That stung a little bit but I did suspect that we had been over time before the results came out. I took time on the dog walk down ramp as well as on the table and then on the weaves...it was just too much for the tighter USDAA times. But I realize that supporting my dog now will sow the seeds of great runs to come in the future, so this is no loss at all. One day we will get a P2 Standard Q!
Perri was next in P1 Standard. She did miss the weave entry but she blew me away when I restarted her with the most gorgeous set of weaves she has ever done in a trial not only since her injury...but in her entire career! Really exciting for the future. She gets a table fault but somehow that did not end up on our score sheet so Perri qualified! It felt like a rotten dirty Q :)
Perri is now one Standard Q away from her Performance Dog title. I have decided to move her into Championship class for 2017 since her height would be 24" rather than 26". I like 24" for Perri. We have a few legs towards the Agility Dog title, but not many. Honestly, given Perri's personality it will be just fine with me to stay in Starter level for a while longer. And if we don't like Starters, we can always come back to P1 - no worries there.
We ended the day with Molly doing P2 Gamblers and earning her Advanced Performance Gamblers title - that means Molly gets to move into her first P3 class at our next trial! Of course Gamblers was our best run of the day...that's just how Molly rolls.
 |
| Good girls! |
No comments:
Post a Comment