training and rah's utility debut

ill try to contain myself and start with training this week :)

we did agility first on wednesday - i didnt train rah because he was on rest because of his weave pole incident last friday...

worked single jump exercises and dog walk, then did some rear cross and wrap work. berlin did well, but she chose to jump off the dog walk at one point to bark at someone (bad girl) and landed on her neck/head when she tripped and put her tooth through her lip. blood everywhere. she also bit me in the finger going for her tug at one point. we bled a lot.

thursday was only her, and she did lovely - great attention, lively heeling _ WONDERFUL fig8s, and we did nice work with the broad jump, retrieves, etc. terry says she will be my more reliable dog once she figures it all out, she HAS the ability to be perfect!

ok ok ok moving forward... we had ASCA trials this weekend - rah was entered all 4 trials - needed one leg to finish his CDX. i toyed with entering berlin but opted not to since i wanted to focus on rah here, and i dont know where she is yet.

first trial, rah was on crack. CRACK. all his freak flags flying and hits off of (his border collie brother-from-another-mother) shane . his heeling was vertical - literally jumping straight in the air. it wasn't pretty... then we got to the drop. and i misconstrued her drop signal so i wasnt sure, so i dropped him and ... he didn't drop! it was bad bad bad :) ROF and ROH not bad, BJ was pretty good... but no CDX.

second trial - rah was still on crack, but slightly more controlled drugs. vertical leaps in the slow that went ABOVE my head. but he did drop and completed the principle parts of the exercises with his crazed fashion du jour and we qualified with a third place for his ASCA CDX!!!

i decided to move him up to utility for sunday, because his open was majorly breaking down and he was anticipating everything, a total twitch and was having a problem controlling it. didnt want to reinforce that, letting him get worse and worse without talking to kathy/terry, so move up he did - figured it would at least be a nice match, since the entries were fairly cheap.

so we're last in utility A...

signals - the judge gives us the wrong heeling pattern, so she stops us and restarts (side note, he seems more controlled with a signal rather than a verbal heel) - we heel and i give him the signal to stand, he nails it. i leave him, cross the ring and he NAILS his signals!!! woohoo!!!!

articles next - im nervous but he runs out and hits the right article first one he sniffs! everyone things this is a flaw... second article we get out and he works hard. picks up the wrong ones and knows they arent right, finally finds the right one, grabs it (by the bell, EEK) and comes back - WOOHOO!!!

gloves - gets the right one, but shakes hard and considers for a flicker of a second not coming back. but he does, good boy!

moving stand - moves a bit during the exam (INTO the judge to be pet -another thing to work on), but he does it.

and he NAILS GO OUTS - RAH QUALIFIED!!! HE QUALIFIED!!! rah got his first UD leg!!!!!!!!

he almost fronted to the judge on the last go out, but he DID IT!!!!

we were the last sole survivor of the class, but he DID It!

im on cloud nine - i took this as a training match opportunity sorta thing, and he did it!!!!!!

of course, the second trial it wasnt as nice, but i dont care - i know we need to work on things. but he DID IT!!!!!

RAH RAH - super dog!