It had to happen sooner or later.....

Yeah, today was the day that we went down in flames. Through no fault of his own, Cash was so totally freaked out I pulled him from the rally ring. (Darn, and they had really pretty pastel New Title rosettes....)

I took Cash out to potty about 20 minutes before ringtime. We had already completed walk throughs and the Advanced B class had just started. While tooling around behind the Qwest Center looking for just the right spot to pee, a TRAIN came zipping down the tracks not 20 feet from where we were in the grass and BLEW THE WHISTLE!!! In the several times I've attended shows at the Qwest I've never seen a train on those tracks. Talk about freaked out, scared out of his mind! His tail clamped so tight between his butt cheeks, I thought he's turned into a really funny looking Aussie. I made light of the situation, didn't baby him, or "poor Cash" him and calmly walked him back inside.

After working with him with his favorite toy, which he had no interest in, I did get him to do a front for a treat, but he immediately whipped into a finish so his back wasn't to anyone. He seemed settled down enough to try the ring after awhile, so I kept working with him and treating him outside the ring. When it was our turn and we're at the Start sign, along comes a squeaky dolly topped with 6 crates full of Min Pins in full YAP. That was it. He left my side and headed for the exit. I turned to the judge and said, "Ya know, I just don't think today is his day. But thank you." The judge was very kind and after I told him what had happened outside, commended me for my decision to pull him and not let him think it was okay to be terrified in the ring.

There's always another show.

On another note, thank goodness for crate games.

I had a "D'oh" moment yesterday at the show that could have been a crisis situation. I had taken Cash out for a potty break and put him back in his crate to relax until closer to his class. Apparently I didn't get the crate door latched properly but didn't notice it and walked away. About 15 or 20 minutes later I glanced over at our crating area and saw his crate door ajar a couple of inches. My heart stopped. I raced to his crate and bent over to peer inside to be greeted by a poodle with a very serious expression on his face, sitting straight up, waiting patiently for his release word. I'm sure if he could talk I would have been chewed out, but that look said it all. Had he not learned (apparently quite well) to wait for a release word, I would have had a loose dog among the couple thousand in attendance. Whew!

Five for Five!

Cash was the beneficiary of an extemely generous qualifying score (I thought we NQ'd) in rally advanced today that was good enough for third place. (Okay, I fess up, there were only three in the class.... there, pure honesty.) He is now five for five on qualifying scores in rally with one more to go for his RA title. As one of my instructors said, "Green is green." At least he didn't blow Daddy's entry fee.

I didn't get as much of a walk through as I would have liked since Advanced B and A walked the course together and the B class was huge! I also didn't notice the floor grate covered by matting when I was doing my walk through. It was a serious error as when we were on course it made a huge clunk sound as I walked over it doing the offset figure 8. Cash went straight in the air and barked at me as if I did it on purpose. Opinionated little brat! Had to redo that exercise and several more as he had a bad case of "the wanders" occasionally, but then showed flashes of brilliance in his attention and execution.

Since he seems to do better the second day of a show, I'm hopeful we can finish his advanced title tomorrow.

Success! (sort of)

Cash's last agility class for Obstacles was last night. We didn't pass into the Handlers class which would be the next step up because he still finds other things more interesting than me (plus the fact that he still has teeter *issues*) And he flew through 6 weaves absolutely flawlessly, both ways, numerous times.

However....

TaDa!


He won the last games sequence and a big jar of Three Dog Bakery treats (and a Cadbury candy bar for me) with the highest score and cleanest run. Let me describe the scene...

There were two bar jumps, a tunnel, a tire jump and a broad jump placed around the perimeter of the room. In the center was a table. The table was the bonus. We were each given a minute and a half to correctly complete an obstacle which the handler chose, race to the table, perform a down without a cue, release and treat the dog and repeat as many times as we could in the allotted time. Ten points were awarded for each correct bonus. Five points were deducted if a cue to down was given. Ten seconds was allotted to achieve the down. If not, release and repeat the table until it was correct, wasting precious time.

His score was 80 with no faults. And his handler needed oxygen at the end of it.

This is NOT going to be pretty.....

Can you say NO SNIFF really, really loud on Saturday and Sunday around 11:30 CDT? I'm thinking that is going to be all that even phases Cash in the rally ring at the show this next weekend. I see his Daddy's entry fee going up in smoke as I even thing about it.

He was so excited about being in a strange place at Gerianne's that I even stopped at one of the signs as he ran off to investigate another sign and said, "Hey, this is supposed to be a TEAM sport!" He did come back to me every time and was able to actually do an exercise here and there in a very nice fashion. Consistency is what we need. That and focus.... yeah LOTS AND LOTS of FOCUS!

Let's see..... where were we?

A week off for a Minnesota trip and having many visitors to our home over the last couple of weeks has left me in a tailspin as to where we were at in training with both rally and agility.

We have now had a couple of rally classes since returning home and I'm still not happy with the blasted sniffing, although last night was better than it had been recently. Our club is cleaned late on every Monday night and I swear by Friday night's rally class a whole herd of Shelties had a major hair meltdown sometime during the week. There are puffs of hair all over the place that in Cash's mind must deserve his complete attention. Is he doing the canine version of DNA testing or what? Anyway, it was better but still not where it needs to be with the Nebraska Kennel Club show coming up next weekend. I'm going to take him to a rally fun match tomorrow morning at Gerianne Darnell's place and see how that goes as a warm-up for next weekend. We have the potential to finish his rally advanced title at NKC, but unless the sniffing takes a hike, I'm not confident of that.

There was no agility on July 4th and the week break from formal training allowed us to work on some weave training at home. In the testing portions of class his contacts were gorgeous and the weaves are coming along. When we ran a sequence however, he hit the contacts, but failed to hold a 2O/2O. He appeared to be having several "blonde moments" attack him all at once. Hmmmm.

If the timing is right tomorrow, I may run him in on a novice agility course after the rally just to see how he does in a strange environment.