Eepie Earns her CD Title

Eepie has earned her Companion Dog title!!

She is now Australian Champion Ieper-Rilla vd Arkiv CD (Imp USA)

I love the "Imp USA" part because she is definitely an IMP................

YAAAAAAAY

We did two trials this weekend.

In the first trial she was sitting on 191 and first place (and a title) until the dog next to her rolled right into her space in the sit stay and kept on rolling around - she coped for a while but the dog kept on rolling on its back and waving its legs in the air under her nose and generally behaving like a lunatic. My beautiful girl just lay down saying "I can't cope with this, Mum!"

My heart sank..........so near and yet so far!

All i can say about this is that i wish people who are not qualifying and who know their dogs are not stable could be offered a separate opportunity to practise their stays - far, far away from dogs who are qualifying......

Fortunately, a friend with a wonderful sense of humour took us aside in the break between trials and suggested we practise a sit stay with strangeness going on right under Eepie's nose. So we set up the sit stay with our two dogs and she got down on all fours and wiggled and rolled around right in front of both dogs. Eep looked at her as though she was crazy but she held her stay..........and my friend explained that when she trains stays at her club they do this kind of stuff all the time to add distractions to the exercise.

Thanks, Kathy! Your friendship, good humour and support really made my day - and helped me turn my disappointment into success!

All through Eepie's Novice classes the dogs were very well behaved on their stays and we had never trained with a dog behaving so rudely right in front of us. So - from now on i will look for badly-behaved dogs to practise stays with - they will become my friends for those few short but important minutes.

In the second trial she worked very nicely except for the very start of the heeling pattern when she left me briefly to mark a few blades of grass - i had taken her for a pee break so this really surprised me but the judge assured me it was "just a few drops" and not a real pee. We lost ten points for misbehaviour and a few more for the loss of position. The rest of her exercises were done steadily and well with full or nearly full marks. :-)

As we were setting up for the second lot of stays i took advantage of the break before judging started and whispered in her ear "Now, i want you to be good and WAIT, OK? Can you do a good WAIT for me this time? And then we were asked to take up position and leave our dogs. I gave her command firmly "WAIT!" and walked away to the edge of the ring hoping and hoping that this time we'd be OK..........Once you leave your dog on the stays, there's not a lot you can do about what happens next.

It was a long wait for the judge to say "RETURN" but she sat there like a little princess and i got back to her side with no mishaps this time. In the down stays the dog beside her got a bit bored and started sniffing in the direction of the barbecue up at the clubhouse. His handler closed her eyes and i stood there willing him to keep it together for just a little bit longer.......he was fine, Eepie was fine.

Again the judge said "RETURN" and suddenly i was back beside Eepie smiling down at her and she was looking up at me with her happy face. She had just earned her second obedience title for the year.

We got 178 points for the second trial - and at the presentations our judge told everyone it would have been a lot more but for her pee break. Her average score for Novice was 185.3.

We have done seventeen shows and eleven obedience trials this year and earned Ch, CCD and CD titles. Its time for a summer break while we work on our long stays for Open and scent discrimination and the seekback for UD.

I'm really looking forward to 2011.

YAY Eepie!!

Eepie CD!!

August/September Novice Trials

We have done four Novice trials in the last four weeks.......

In the first two trials at our home club, BDOC, Peep was sitting on 189 and 190 and both times she went down on her sit-stays. NQ x 2.

I was SO disappointed. She hadn't blown a sit stay before. So i gave this new behaviour some serious thought - the 'only' thing that was different was the weather - it was a sunny 13 degrees that Saturday and hitherto we had done all our training at night in temperatures of about 4 degrees.

Her stays were so solid in training that i hadn't practised them during the day in the spring sunshine. And i hadn't practised them at all in the week before the BDOC trials.

Black dogs are like solar collectors when the sun comes out.........and we need to practise!

What was i thinking?

BAD Trainer!!

So we practised doing our sit stays everywhere - in the hallway while i loaded the car, in the training paddock in mild spring sunlight, while waiting for dinner to be served........ we practised stays alone and stays in company, stays with Unkie Harpo and stays with our Novice class buddies.........

And then we travelled to Wagga Wagga for the Kyeamba trials in early September.

Eepie won the first trial with 192 points and came third in the second trial with 186 points.

The difference in her points was, again, a trainer/handler malfunction. i was so nervous in the second trial that i kept anticipating the judge's commands and the judge was not impressed. We were docked for my lack of attention.

Bad Handler!!

I have learned some valuable training and handling lessons and my dear, patient, clever pup has earned two legs of her Novice title despite her klutz of a mother.

Our last trials for the year are in about ten days. We are entered in two Novice trials so we have two chances to finish her CD in 2010.

I'm hoping it won't be too warm and sunny on the day and yes, we will be practising our stays beforehand.....