Weekend Report

Here's a picture of Pinch with his ribbons and toys from this weekend. No, we didn't burn up the Obedience ring in terms of winning classes and high scores, but we DID accomplish all the things I wrote about in previous blog posts. My head was in the right place, so there was nothing tentative about Pinch's performance. He WANTED to be in the ring and he was a blast to show. We had a great time this weekend and we have two U-CD legs to boot. He qualified all three times (3rd leg didn't count as it was the same judge, you have to have 3 legs under 2 different judges). Some training holes emerged but they are fixable ones. Pinch just needs more "seasoning" and a bit more maturity before he heads for Novice B. There was some silliness and some distractions that need to be worked on.

It's interesting to note that Pinch got the same score for his 3rd leg that Moto did; the difference was Moto - in Novice at least - was not a happy boy and just wanted to get it over with. I was absolutely devastated. With Pinch, well, he was having TOO much of a good time. He did the fast without me, briefly got "lost" before he caught back up to me for heeling. He flew over the high jump on the recall, started to go to a finish, caught himself, but just stood there. But then, when given the signal, lept into finish position. We did hand touches between exercises. He tugged with his leash. So while the score wasn't good, he did the best he could with what he knew. And he tried. He was up. He was happy. I'll call it a good day.

There was a fun match Saturday night and I worked Moto in Open. While a bit nervous in new surroundings he worked through it and turned in a very nice performance. He too did hand touches between exercises. His broad jump was just lovely.

It was a great weekend. Oh! The best part of course was snuggling with my two boys on the bed. Being wrapped in a lovely blanket of Sheltie was the best ever.

Now on to tweak our problem areas and begin some new training ideas!