Warning: shameless bragging follows.
Shakespeare and I manned a CIA booth at Hancock County Paws in the Park and then another at a Camp Bowwow grand opening on Saturday, where we did clicker demos, and then Sunday we traveled to an APDT Rally Obedience trial.
Shakespeare had four runs, pulling two firsts and a third and never scoring below 200 (a perfect performance score is 200, with a potential of 203 with attitude points). He finished his Level 2 title and got some legs toward further titles.
I’d signed up Laev for two Level 1 runs as well, figuring that we didn’t have to do the full course and it would be good experience for her to enter and have fun in the ring. I had no goal but to play with her and leave her enjoying the trial experience. Imagine my surprise, then, when we left the first run only one point shy of a qualifying score!
I wasn’t only not trying to qualify, I was actively trying to avoid qualifying — unlike other venues, APDT Rally O awards different titles based on the quality of scores, so I don’t want Laev to qualify until she can do it with a high score. I was therefore simultaneously amazed, slightly disappointed and relieved to see that she’d missed it by a point. 🙂 The next round, I warned the judge that I was going to deliberately NQ, which she graciously allowed.
Laev was by no means a stellar performer, but she was pretty good for a six-month-old puppy who hadn’t even seen all the exercises in a Rally O course. She got quite a few compliments, because between bouts of trying to eat the signs 😉 she showed real focus and brilliant attention, even if she didn’t understand all the exercises. And those she knew — finding heel position, fronts, changes of position, etc. — she did pretty well. I was just thrilled with her.
She doesn’t have the duration of attention required to really make it through a 18 station course, but I won’t be attempting that seriously for a while yet. In the meantime, Shakespeare is actually having fun in a competition ring and Laev is getting good experience. 🙂
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Did you use food on these perfect scores with Shakespeare?? Are you not doing AKC Rally??