Getting There

Last weekend marked the anniversary of Beckett’s and my foray into Utility competition. Beckett is my first attempt at training Utility so it was a scary debut last fall. My goal was to finish her UD within the year and we accomplished that in less than 11 months. Not too bad, I think. It took us “only” 14 tries to get the three qualifying scores. I say “only” because I know some people who have over 100 tries and still no title. So I’m thinking we didn’t do too bad. It was frustrating, yes, but very rewarding in the end and the road we traveled taught me a lot as a trainer and as a person.

So on Saturday in Peoria, Beckett and I went into the combined classes for our 2nd attempt to earn a UDX leg (we earned our first leg while finishing our UD title in Lansing). I was much more relaxed as there is no title on the line right now and my mindset was more that this was a training match than a qualifying show.

While we did qualify in Utility B, it wasn’t a best effort. We started with the Directed Retrieve. Beckett had to ‘kill’ the glove (#3) as she picked it up and lost us a point and then another point off for front and finish. Sigh.  This is always my weakest part of all the exercises that require them, but I don’t tend to work very hard on training/fixing them. Well, it bit me the whole weekend.

Then we did the heeling/signal exercise. I was pleased with the overall points off on our signal exercise. We only lost 2.5 points, but a full point of that was for another crooked front and very crooked finish. The other point and a half was for a lag on a right turn, a lag on an about turn, and a bump on the left turn (half point each). Sloppy effort on Beckett’s part.

Then came the bane of our existence and the reason I moved to the B class before earning our title — Directed Jumping or go-outs. The first go-out was pretty crooked, towards the corner where she had retrieved the glove. This is a pretty normal issue, even with OTCH dogs, so we lost a point and a half for her crooked path. Then the bar jump was on my right (and right in front of her) and she did that just fine. Crooked front and finish for another point off.

Second go-out and she again drifted to the right but not as far so we only lost a point for that. But she was still closer to the bar jump than the high jump and I wasn’t positive she’d take it. So I gave a real strong command/signal and she did it! Lost another point (that’s 4.5 total) on the front and finish.

Then finally a perfect exercise in the Moving Stand for exam! So that means she actually got a straight finish. Lastly came Scent Discrimination (articles) and it was good — losing a point on both articles for a crooked front and crooked finish each time.

But we qualified even tho the score (189) is not one I’m particularly happy with, but I’ll take it as it is a Q.

The judge is a tough one and he told me as we were going over our scores that if she had nailed her fronts and finishes, we’d have been in the placements. I figured it out and had we lost NO points on fronts and finishes, we would have easily placed second. Sigh.

The wait to go into the Open ring was long as the building heated up as the day went on . We were in the second group of 10 dogs and didn’t get in the ring until almost 11:00. I left Beckett out in the car in her crate as there was a nice breeze and it was about 15 degrees cooler than in the building. I just don’t understand why everyone was packed inside the building where crating was limited and there was no A/C. They kept the doors closed, too, so very little cool air was circulating. Poor dogs were all feeling the heat. Guess they’re too lazy to walk outside and get their dog when their turn came.

Anyway, Beckett was a little flat going in for Open. She’s just not yet used to having to ‘go to school’ twice in one day. We started with the retrieve on the flat and lost a point (again) to a crooked front and finish.  Then came the drop on recall and once again, another point off for, you guessed it, crooked front and finish.

Onto the retrieve over the high jump and wonders of wonders, she did it perfectly! But then lost a point again on the broad jump (darn those sloppy fronts and finishes). The last individual exercise was the Figure 8 and heeling. Her first figure 8 was horrible, laggy and wide, but she improved on the second one.  Then the free heel part and we lost more points for two lags and a couple of wides. Total points lost were three and a half. The group stay exercises were no problem. So she qualified with a 193. Once again, we’d have placed well if not for those fronts and finishes.

That was our 2nd UDX leg in as many attempts. Whew! Beckett also earned $10 as High Scoring Border Collie with a Herding Title. She was one of two entered and the other dog NQ’d. But he took it from us the next day. Oh well.

Sunday was a repeat of  Saturday’s problems with the fronts and finishes. I really don’t know what has happened with her and them. We were losing almost no points on fronts and finishes the last few trials. Hm.

We started with articles and lost a half point on the first one for the finish and a full point on the second one for the front and finish. She gave me heart failure on the second article as she went out and opened her mouth over the correct article three times and then left it to search the pile again, before finally picking it up. Since she never touched the article, she didn’t get hit for it, but I was sure worried about it.

Then came gloves (#3 again) and it was great until the finish. Half point off. Heeling/signals were much better than Saturday’s and we only lost 2 points total! That’s more like it. The moving stand for exam was nice until a crooked finish (1/2 point). And then go-outs as our last exercise.

I was not happy when I saw the order of the exercises at the beginning of the day. While they were mixed up, the last exercise was still the go-outs Yuck! This would be the test as to whether Beckett’s issues were on the mend. Well, she went out crooked again, but not as bad as the day before and she did a nice jump. Second go-out, pretty much the same, slightly crooked but she also started to pull up short so I told her to sit so we wouldn’t NQ for doing it on her own. Signaled the left (high) jump, she took it. and we qualified again. We lost only 3 points on go-outs this time. I’m sure there was a crooked finish or two in there. We earned a 192.5 which was much better than the day before.

The wait for Open B didn’t seem nearly as long. We hung out in the shade of the car until it was our turn. It was the same order of exercises as the day before.

We lost one point (front & finish) for the retrieve on flat. The drop on recall was nice until the front and finish (another point). Retrieve over the high lost us a half a point for the finish. The broad jump lost us another half point but this time on the front, she nailed the finish. But once again we got hit hard on the Figure 8 and heeling, losing a full FOUR points. I’m not sure I agree with this assessment as I felt she did a better job than that. She did her group stays just fine. Thata girl!

Beckett seemed more “up” than Saturday and I felt that her performance was much improved over Saturday’s, but the judge didn’t score it that way. Different judge, different day, different opinion. That’s the breaks. We earned a 192, a point worse than the day before, but it didn’t feel that way.  I came out feeling like we had a 193 or better. Ah well.

But that was another double Q and our 3rd UDX leg. Two more attempts next weekend in Rockford.

Conversations

I’ve been having a fantastic email conversation with a friend who is quite adept at training for herding. She owns a herding champion dog who is such a joy to watch work. Sharon has been SO nice to offer her opinions and insights on my problems that I’m encountering with Trey. She even went as far as posting a video to YouTube to demonstrate some of what she was talking about in her emails. It was fabulous!

What I saw in the video was what I want my dog to look like when I’ve successfully trained her. It was an thing of utter beauty, even when he wasn’t perfectly right.

It seems so obvious that you want square flanks, wide outruns, and a nice down and I thought I was getting there with Trey — until I saw Sonic do it correctly. WOW!  Now I know what a lot of work I have yet to do with my girl.

Luckily, I’d already decided that I am not going to trial at the Intermediate level in AKC, but wait until my dog was fully trained for Advanced and I know that that will take at least a full year (with luck) or more (realisically with a novice trainer), so I’m not ‘ruining’ any short-term goals. And all the things that I want Trey to do (like Sonic) will only make trialling her much easier and more rewarding.

So the mantra now is ‘baby steps’ to do it correctly instead of bulling thru just enough to pass (that is – after Trey earns her Started B title this fall).

Busy Busy

It’s getting real busy around here as I prepare for the Border Collie National Specialty show the first week of October. I am event secretary for rally/obedience/conformation and while most of the rally & obedience entries arrived shortly after the opening date, the conformation entrants msut be waiting until the last miuute.

The National Specialty generally has 150-200 conformation entries each year. So far I have about 50. So I’m guessing that I will be receiving a bunch in the mail between today and Saturday, and then probably the most on Tuesday. Monday is a holdiday with no mail delivery, so late entries should really arrive on Tuesday with Wednesday also being pretty full. I’m really hoping I don’t get any entries on Thursday as then I’ll have to let them know that they missed the closing deadline and can’t be entered.

I am also having to find time to train the girls. Beckett is entered two weekends in a row for attempts at double Qs for UDX legs.  Trey is entered at the National Specialty in herding. Both need to have training to keep ‘on their game’ and be sharp. Beckett will be getting go out practice about twice a week along with brief sessions on heeling. My Figure 8 footwork and handling is SO rusty that it cost us major points at our last trial. Trey just needs to have every other day practice at outruns to continue to improve not slicing. We also are trying to back her off the duck’s butts since she is too close. Unfortunately with my ducks, she has to be fairly close or they don’t move. I need lighter stock!

I was going to a friend’s house to practice on her ducks but she is in the process of moving and the ducks are no longer at her old place where there was a place to practice. So I’m ’stuck’ practicing here at home with my ducks. I wasn’t planning on getting anymore ducks but I may bring home another couple sets this fall after my club’s herding trials in November so that I have some new creatures to practice with. Perhaps I will sell one or both sets of ducks I now have. Gotta think on that.

Beckett’s Weekend

The trip to Lansing was relatively uneventful, barring a poorly marked detour that cost me about a half an hour travel time. We had a lovely time on Friday with my friend, Deb, and her pup, Cinder, who is Trey’s daughter. Cinder earned her first RE (Rally) leg while we watched. It was very exciting to be able to watch her work! She is living up to be the dog I thought she would be when I had picked her for my own. Too bad for me that it didn’t work out, but Deb got one awesome puppy!

Saturday dawned dark and stormy, not a good omen as Beckett is afraid of storms. I told Deb on the drive to the trial that if it was thundering when we were due to go in the ring, I would pull Beckett instead of making her try to work thru her paranoid fear of thunder. Well, the rain came down hard and steady but there was no thunder. Beckett seemed a little stressed but not over-the-top fearful so we went into the ring.

Beckett started out a bit dull in her heeling (lloking back it was more due to stress from the rain), missing the only sit in the exercise. 3 points – ouch. Just as we were finishing the ’slow’ part of the heeling exercise, there was a loud rumble of thunder. Darn! Beckett startled away from me but came right back as I finished the about turn. I knew we were sunk. I gave her the stand signal and walked away across the ring to complete the signal exercise. What I didn’t know until I watched the video (thanks for taping us, Deb!) was that she started to follow me but remembered her training and held the stand/stay. Good girl! So when I turned she was still standing there but she was shaking and panting and bug-eyed. I wasn’t surprised when she refused my signal to down. Sigh. I gave her a verbal as I couldn’t allow her to ignore a command and she did lie down but we NQd right there. She was slow enough on the sit signal that again I gave a verbal. No help was needed on the come signal.

Articles were next and by the time we were setting up (less than a minute), Beckett was rapidly regaining her confidence. She did her articles quickly and confidently and we only lost a half point each time for a crooked front postition.

On to the Gloves exercise and you couldn’t tell by then that she had been spooked. We got glove #2 (center glove) and she did great, losing no points. Same with the Moving Stand, she was perfect!

So then we had to do the jinxed Go-out/jumps. I had decided to raise her jumps to really get her to focus on them so she was looking at 24″ jumps. The first go-out was a bit off to the right of center and we lost a point, but she took the bar jump on the left and then lost another half point on the finish. Second go-out got a bit hinky. She again veered a bit off to the right but also started to turn way short. Being as we had already NQd, I didn’t allow her to stop but instead gave her a second “zoom” command and she went all the way. That gave us another NQ, but that was okay. She doesn’t get to do it her way. So I gave her the signal to jump the high jump and she DID! Lost another half point on the finish. If we hadn’t NQd we would have gotten about a 194. That ended our last Utiltiy A class.

Fred Buroff again was the judge (had him in Champaign in June when we NQd) and he is fairly “light-pencilled” but our potential 194 would have won the class by 8 points. Sigh. But I AM proud of Beckett for bouncing back from her fear of thunder so quickly and working wonderfully afterwards. And go figure, that was the only rumble of thunder all morning! Guess it just wasn’t meant to be. . .

Sunday dawned with some clouds and a bit of thunder which quickly passed – thankfully! But then it got hot and very muggy. There was a nice breeze so we left the young dogs outside in the car with the sunshade over the windows and all the doors open. They were much more comfortable than we were inside the building. I had entered Beckett in the Utility B class for Sunday as I figured if we NQd on the last exercise the day before, then the mixed up exercises might help break the jinx, and if we had qualified on Saturday, then I’d need to be in the B class to try for our first UDX leg. So being as we NQd the day before, we were still seeking our last Q and the title.

Beckett was 7th of 12 dogs competing in the class. The order of the exercises were Gloves, Heel/Signals, Go-outs, Moving Stand, and Articles. Nicely mixed up so as not to have the go-outs last. The judge, Catherine M. Thompson, was a bit heavier pencilled than the judge the day before, but it was also the B class where perfection is judged harder. On the gloves, it was glove #1 (on the left) and she did it well, losing a half point each for front and finish.

Onto the signal exercise and we did MUCH better than Saturday, losing only 2 points total! THAT was awesome. Her heeling was pretty nice, but not spectacular (it rarely is) and she did her signals promptly and easily, no apparent trauma left over from Saturday’s storm. I was very pleased.

Go-outs were next. I have to admit to a tiny butterfly flutter in my stomach that I quickly squelched. Again, I had her jump height raised, this time it was 22″ since that’s where we were grouped in the jump height order. When I sent Beckett she veered again to the right like on Saturday and started to turn early (1 point off total). Since we were still qualifying at that point, I just gave her the sit command since she was far enough past the jump line. The first jump was the bar jump on the left. Would she take it when she was so far right? She did! Crooked finish for a half point.

Second part — she did the same thing, veered to the right and turning early for another point off. But she was very near the high jump on the right which is the one we have flunked in previous attempts. I gave her the signal/command and she took the jump! Another 1/2 point for the crooked finish, but we did it! The jinx was broken. Three shows in a row Beckett did the jumps correctly. Yippee!!! So for the Go-outs we lost only 3 points total.

The Moving Stand was another perfect exercise. We’ve only had problems with that one in Springfield back in April due to the judge being so funky about touching her. Before that and since then it’s been a ‘gimme’ exercise. Nice to have one in your pocket.

Articles were next (and the last exercise between us and our title). Beckett has such a lovely turn on her send (I do a direct send as opposed to a turn and sit, then send) that we have never lost points for it. Beckett went directly to the pile and cost us a half point by mouthing a wrong article before picking up the correct one but not a bad effort.

The second article had my heart thumping and the butterflies dancing in my stomach. If Beckett got the right one, we’d have our title. I took several deep breaths as I didn’t want my nerves to transfer to Beckett. Not to worry. She went out and found the correct article right away, brought it back, fronted straight and finished straight for zero lost points. THAT WAS OUR Q!!!! Beckett and I had finally earned our Utility Dog title! What a rush. I did a happy dance right there in the ring. We earned a 192.5 which is excellent for a novice team out of the B class. We were only one full point out of the placements (with 3rd and 4th requiring a run-off with a tie of 193.5). If we hadn’t had those crooked finishes, we might have placed.

But we had another class to go. I had figured when I sent in the entries that if we were in Utility B on Sunday that I might as well enter Open B on the off chance that if we qualified in Utility on Sunday then we could try for our first UDX leg also. The UDX requires 10 double Qs from Utility B & Open B on the same day — we have to pass both classes on the same day to earn a leg and do that 10 times. The Utility Dog Excellent title is a mark of a consistently working team. Beckett is a pretty consistent working dog, so it is do-able for us once we conquered Utility. So I entered us in Open B, also.

We haven’t been in an Open class since Beckett earned her title (CDX) in April, 2006, so I was a bit jerky in my movements and footwork. The Open B class also has mixed up exercises and the sequence we got that day was Broad Jump, Figure 8, Heel, Drop on Recall. Retreive over the High Jump, Retrieve on the Flat.

Beckett did a nice broad jump but lost a 1/2 point on a crooked front.

The Figure 8 was poor on both our parts with my jerky handling and Beckett lagging on both outside turns. The rest of the Heeling exercise was a bit better. Altogether we lost 4 points for the Fig. 8/heeling exercise. Not bad but we can do better.

The Drop on Recall had NQd all but one previous team that day. Either they weren’t dropping or they wouldn’t finish the recall after the drop. I was starting to rethink Beckett’s drop command (which is a signal), wondering if I should change it to a verbal command since so many dogs were failing the exercise, but decided to trust her and our training. Good thing, too, as she dropped like a rock. That’s my girl! Another 1/2 point lost on the crooked finish.

Beckett was pretty excited to see the dumbbell come out for the Retrieve over the High Jump. She really likes to retrieve. We lost a full point. It must have been for both a crooked front and crooked finish. I can see the crooked finish in the video, but can’t tell about the front but the rest of the exercise was perfect so that must have been it.

Then came the Retrieve on the Flat. Again Beckett did a nice job until the finish and we lost another 1/2 point. Gonna have to polish those finishes! But we qualified up to that point.

All that was left was the group stay exercises. This time they were in regular order — 3 minute out of sight Sit followed by a 5 minute out of sight Down. I sweated the sit a bit as it was hot and humid and Beckett had been in her crate sleeping for over 25 minutes so there was a possibility that she might break, especially if a dog next to her broke. But the worrying was for naught as she was still sitting where I left her when I came back. The down was much easier to wait thru since Beckett’s group down position is a ‘dead dog’ on her side position. She could snooze if she wanted to. She was still on her side when I got back altho her eyes were very active so I doubt that she took a short nap.

After everyone was back to their dogs, the judge announced those who passed. We did! Our first UDX leg to put icing on that UD title. Our score was 193.5 which isn’t bad for the B class but is a bit low for our average Open score which is a 195. But I’ll take it. It was also good enough for 3rd place.

I’m extremely proud of Beckett for everything she did this weekend. She persevered thru her fear of thunder and bounced back to finish her run. She did all her go-outs and jumps. She earned her UD and a UDX leg. What a weekend!

Nerves

I am trying not to get too nervous about this weekend. It is the ‘Great Road Trip’, the farthest I’ve ever gone for an obedience trial. I am focusing on seeing Deb and Cinder and Sharon and what happens in the obedience ring is secondary. I am going to approach it as a training run thru and try to remain relaxed and have clean handling. The rest is up to Beckett as to whether or not she’ll take the jumps like I know she can.

Thinking good thoughts.