 |
| Grace Wins Wild Card Open Class. She was disappointed that the prize bowl was empty! |
Saturday was Grace's only entry in the trial. She won the Wild Card Open class. The 1st place prize was a nice heavy dog bowl. Grace was over the moon when they handed me the bowl - and then she was totally crestfallen a second later when she realized the bowl was empty. I watched the video again while posting this - all around Grace is much better in the ring. She no long slinks when healing and she seems much more her "normal" self that I get in practice at home. During the sit stay (our wild card exercise), the judge let me work with her - I corrected her when she went down and then stayed in the ring for the remainder of the time. She corrected herself once when she started to go down and I gave her my best "I don't think so look" so I feel she is finally grasping the concept that "sit" and "down" are not equivalent behaviors. Wild Card Utility here we come!
Bern had 3 attempts at finishing his Open A title this weekend. And he managed to NQ himself during each run. Our videos are here: Sat Morning, Sat Afternoon, and Sun Morning. My take on his runs: 1) He went down on both his out-of-site sit stays on Saturday - back pain? laziness? Since I didn't know why I gave him some canine pain medicine and I massaged his back well before he went in the ring on Sunday. Sunday I was careful to not get him sitting quickly - we stalled while everyone fiddled with armbands, etc. He stayed up for the 3 minutes so we have a solution to this problem. 2) Unfortunately Bern also bobbled at least one dumbbell retrieve during each trial. He bounds out to the dumbbell and then gets soooo distracted he forgets he has been sent on a retrieve. Sunday morning he did that twice but was quick to run out a second time and retrieve the dumbbell over the high jump as the judge was picking it up. It doesn't take much to distract him and then he just can't remember what he was doing. 3) Bern's healing is continuing to improve in the ring. He started off healing the figure 8 pattern most of the time with me. I'm trying to not let him zone out and watch the trial around him like television between exercises. We trot and cheer between exercises which is making him Bouncy Bern but better that than Head Not in the Game Bern. So we try again in a few months!
