This past Sunday we went to a fun match held by the Gem Cities Dog Training club in Dayton, OH. It was a bit crowded as usual, but fairly well run, offering both regular obedience and Rally. We survived resonably well.

I did one Rally run with Molly and the only two faults were that she started to get up on the sit/halt/walk around, which was my fault for starting out with my left foot, and the judge didn't think she was tight enough on the sidestep right.

Becky then did a Rally run with Riker and they did fine, except she got dinged several times for tight leash, and she had a hard time getting his attention and getting him to sit on the halts. A little while later I took Riker in and the judge liked that run much better. I used lots of verbal commands, including a strong "sit!" half step before I actually halted, so he handled the halts better. I had one tight leash on the spiral, but as I felt the leash tighten I stepped up the chatter and he caught up. I also verbally cued him for the sidestep so he actually handled that better than Molly. As the judge pointed out, I also moved faster than Becky and that helped. So I think he can qualify.

I also did 2 Open run-throughs with Molly. She was pretty good on the first one, just some minor lags on the figure 8. I did both a drop and a straight recall on the flexi.

Then as we were sitting waiting for the stays I discovered a way to mess with Molly's mind. I would tell her to sit and stay, very low key, then not pay much attention to her. She would sit of course, but after about 30 seconds she would figure she was done, and start to sink down... of course I was ready and would nail her. Then I would ignore her but make her continue the sit for a minute or so. We went through that routine about 4 times before she decided that "sit, stay" meant "sit, stay" even if I didn't make a big deal about it. That seemed to help, since she was very steady on both of her stays.

The second run-through was more ragged. She wasn't as focused on the heeling and for the recall I decided to a straight recall off the flexi and at the first command she just looked at me blankly. Becky says that Bob and Velma Janek's dogs, who were only a few feet away, put up a fuss right then so that she (Becky) couldn't even hear me give the command. In any case, it wasn't the look she has when she hesitates on a recall, it was pure "huh?" She did OK on the second attempt, but still not as snappy as I would like.

On the retrieve over the jump, which we were doing toward the crowd ("because it's harder" as they said) she got distracted for a moment, but I think she would have have recovered even with my reminding her.

Since she did OK on the first stays, we blew off the second set and left for home.

Overall, we did OK. Since we managed to squeeze ALL of of our runs into under 2 hours (we were home by 3 pm), I think they both got a little fried. About all they've done since we got home is sleep.