We were entered in obedience for Friday and Saturday at Reliant in Houston. Bern in Open A and Grace in Rally Adv B. We also watched all the other venues that were competing in the show (agility on slippery carpeting, flyball, frisbee, and conformation).
Grace, AKA Cookie Monster, continues to search for cookies on the mats. Ever since she managed to find cookies in a Rally Offset Figure 8 exercise in an unsecured bowl at the Bossier City trial she has turned into a sniffing dog in the ring (many thanks to Tracey for helping point this out). By golly Ms. Grace has a tracking title and she will use her trained sniffer to search all ring corners where the judge might have placed cookie bowls in the ring. She has only found cookies in the real ring so she only looks for them there.... great, just great. Tracey, Mike and I have some ideas on how to un-train this new behavior. Saturday Grace had a 87. On Sunday her ring time was the same as Bern's so I moved her to the end of the Adv B class... oops now Bern has Open stays. No run for Grace on Sunday but it was probably just as well.
Bern didn't find his drop on recall either day. He has also decided that retrieving the dumbbell over the jump is fun so why wait for the command.... just go as soon as Mom tosses it out of sight. I'm wondering if working with a low panel and then slowly raising the panel height might work. It seems to me that Bern goes for the dumbbell as soon as he losses eye contact with it so if he can maintain a visual on the dumbbell even after it lands then maybe he can learn to stay again.
Teds spent the weekend at the vet. He as reunited with the rest of the guys just fine after his weekend at Dr. Stringer's clinic. Teds now has a new obedience leash out of softer forest green leather from a vendor at Reliant. Mike would like for him to earn his CGC this fall when LCCOC offers the testing.
Bern's utility articles were on the front porch when we got back from Houston. I'm still confident that he can earn his Open title. Therefore, we will begin a little utility training while we refine the two problem Open exercises.
