We had another fun weekend doing rally, now working on our RAE 3.

Yesterday was exhausting, as I had to get up at 5.15 am, drive 100 miles, make sure I get there in time to set up, check in, potty the dog, and all that before the walk-through for Excellent started at 8.20 am. Our 2 runs were pretty much on time, we were done at 9.30, including awards and all. Scores: 84 in Excellent, 94 in Advanced. There was an IP in Excellent, but I don’t remember what.

If everything had gone according to plan, our obedience class would have started at 11.15, and with only 5 dogs entered, been finished about half an hour later.

But no such luck. Novice Obedience ran about 1/2 hour late, and when they were done at 11.45, the judge took her lunch break and said she would be back by 12.30. That was annoying already, but I understand that judges are on their feet all day long and deserve their breaks.

So 12.30 pm rolls around and no judge. 1pm, still no judge. By this time, pretty much all the competitors but those of us waiting for the non-regular classes (really just a handful) had left for the day. 1.30 pm and still no judge. 2 pm, nothing.

Just after 2 she finally shows up and our Graduate Novice class finally starts. By this time I was just really worried that Quigley doesn’t want to do anything anymore, because as much as he likes to do his trials, his attention span isn’t that long.

He surprised me though, and did really well, even though obedience is so much harder than rally, mainly because I can’t talk to him during the exercises. Graduate Novice has lots of recall exercises, which he enjoys, so I think that perked him up.

The exercises for GN in order:
Heeling Pattern – On Leash
Figure 8 – Off Leash
Drop on Recall (dog has to down on command after you call them to you, then you call a second time)
Dumbbell Recall (dog is placed in a sit, you give him the dummbell, walk to the other side of the ring and call)
Recall over the High Jump
Recall over the Broad Jump
3 minute Down-stay (owner out of sight)

We got nicked 6 points during the on-leash heel and off-leash Figure 8 (missed one sit on halt, and had a couple of incidents where he was crowding me and bumped me), 1/2 point each for slightly crooked sits on the drop on recall and dumbbell recalls, and one point for a slow finish after the recall over the broad jump, ending with a score of 192 out of 200 on our first leg! The judge was really, really nice and thought Quigley was just too cute. I won’t argue about that!

By the time I packed up and got into the car it was 3.20 pm, and then it took us until just after 6 pm to drive home in Friday afternoon/evening traffic. I was tired, hungry and just really annoyed about this long day and went to bed not too long after I got home.

When the alarm went off this morning, I would have loved to stay in bed, but I had good motivation – Bari came along to the trial, and we were going to meet Cat and Linda for breakfast afterward.

Our Rally runs today were decent but not great, I could tell Quigley wasn’t really in the mood just yet for doing more stuff. In our Excellent run he did not want to do any of the sits on the course (not many either – I think there were only 5 total) and it took many commands to finally get him to do them somewhat half-assed.

In the Advanced run I just steered us through as quickly as possible, not really paying much attention to close precision, since I wanted him to be finished and out of there without stretching things out any longer than necessary. Scores: 90 in both runs.

We were done at around 10 am, took advantage of a toy vendor with a “10 toys for $10” special and then drove over to Solana Beach for breakfast with Cat and Linda, which was a lot of fun.

Hit the road again around 1 pm and it took us less than 2 hours to drive home.

Now we’ve got a bit of a break until Halloween, when we are signed up to try for our second GN leg, and our next rally trials will be November 6th and 7th, but much closer to home.