Every Diva Has Her Day

I love doing obedience with my dogs, and it is a great feeling when they do well in the ring. However one of the best aspects of obedience is the humility your dogs remind you to observe when they don't have a good day in the ring. As a trainer who I respect a lot has said many times, these are not robots we are taking in the ring. They are dogs and we don't know what they will do on any given occasion.

Personally I like to use the "failures" as learning opportunities. No work in the ring is a failure because you spent time working with your dog, and you gained an opportunity to learn and observe your dog's behaviour, and insight into ways to help your dog do better the next time. This is a dog beside you, not a robot. How is your dog feeling physically? Have you done everything you can to care for his needs? Has your dog had some exercise the day of the trial before you go in? Have you played with the dog that day like you would normally? Have you done your best not to stress yourself out to the point where your dog picks up on it and decides that whatever this is we are doing, it's obviously not going to be fun because you are freaking out?

In spite of doing everything you need to do, you will still have days when your dog surprises you in the ring. This past week we did one Rally trial at the German Shepherd Dog Club of Canada National Specialty. They generously offered one all-breed Rally trial and although the entry was quite small, several shapes and sizes of dogs apart from GSDs were present. I entered Sadie in both Advanced and Excellent, hoping to get another RAE leg towards her title.

Sadie passed her Advanced leg, but pretty much fell apart in the Excellent leg. She lost focus, spent a lot of time looking around and exploring, and I worked quite hard just to get through the course with her. We nq'd of course, and I realized it about halfway through but tried to just complete the course in the best way I could and to stay positive and get her through it.

The course was in an arena we had never been to before. Maybe I should have made an effort to get her in there earlier in the day than I did to let her see where we would be. The ring was indoors, inside an arena, on sod. Sod had been brought in and laid down on the cement to form the ring. I think she was surprised when we started working the course to discover that she was on grass. The arena was large and spacious, and not too many people were around. So at one point when the air conditioning unit came on overhead, she stopped and looked up at it. This trial started at 6pm and we did not go in the ring until about 6:45 the first time. The second round was at about 7:30. This was a first for her and although we do classes often at night, we had never trialed at night. I brought her in about an hour before the trials started and let her walk around and explore but obviously there were conditions in place that caused her to not be able to do her best. In the ring I would not say she was actively deciding not to listen to me but displayed a level of distraction that I was not able to fully draw her out of. She would come back, make contact, do a station, and then I would lose her again. Out of this experience I can take several things to work on. I need to get her out more to different venues. I need to do all things possible to remove the stress from these situations for her. I need to take her to new places and work only focus and use quality rewards for that focus. We also just need to get to more trials and get more experience. She is only 3 years old and really has come so far in the past year that I cannot be unhappy with an off day. We ALL have bad days, including the fabulous dogs who so happily consent to come along with us to the shows. Even the best obedience dogs in the country make mistakes sometimes. After all, we the humans are the ones who sign up, pay the fees, drive to the show, and ask the dogs to come along. It's all our idea, not theirs. The fact that they are happy to come along and do the strange things we ask really is a kind of magic.

Yesterday Sadie participated in her very first Open trial. Unfortunately she made one mistake in the drop on recall which caused us to nq. But I don't care. It was a mistake we can fix. What I was absolutely thrilled about was that she did all the other exercises, and she did a great job. She got excellent marks on heeling, which has always been our weakest area. She did her retrieves, she did the broad jump, and she did her out of sight stays. She did everything with very little visible stress and with a happy wag to her tail when we were finished. I was delighted that she did such a good job in her first trial and I know that she is ready to continue trialing in Open. I know that with more training and more ring experience she and I will have success in the months and years to come.

Thank you Sadie, for being such a good teacher. I will try my best to make our competition time fun and rewarding for both of us!