We finished our URO3 (the equivalent to RE in AKC) with a score of 90 and a 3rd place. I’m so happy about this, since from now on we’ll be able to work on collecting points for the UKC Rally Championship. On the other hand, there are so few trials in this part of the country, it will take us a long time.

Quigley doesn’t know yet what he’s in for, we are doing 3 days of 2 rally runs each next weekend. Since he aced his “rally marathon” last December, I’m not worried though. In fact, I might even enter him for a couple runs in Open to see how that goes…

Which brings me to the second part of this post.

Since we have had issues with out of sight stays, I have not competed in Open again after trying it for the first time a year ago at this same trial. A lot has happened since then, and I knew that the chances of actually qualifying were very, very slim, but I’m so thrilled with the outcome that I do believe Quigley may eventually actually be able to earn that CDX after all.

The best part was that he actually stayed put on both out of sight exercises, even though he went into a down after about half a minute into the group sit. He hates it when he can’t see me, and the last time we tried this he didn’t even stay put at all. I was discouraged and thought it might be the end of competing in obedience, since I wasn’t going to force my dog to do this. If I can’t convince him with positive methods that it is in fact ok if he can’t see me for 5 minutes, then it’s not worth doing. So while I was still practicing Open exercises, I pushed it to the back burner and focused on rally instead.

Running down the score sheet:

1. Honor Dog Exercise (this is in place of the “long down” in AKC, the honor dog is in a down-stay with the owner out of sight until the working dog has completed the heeling pattern and figure 8)
Quigley stayed and didn’t bark or whine, so there were no deductions. 30 points.

2. Heel Off Leash and Figure 8
Heeling fairly long distances isn’t Q’s strong point, but he usually does his Figure 8s pretty well. We had a bit of lagging, walking under the ring rope, and he bumped me a few times, but otherwise it was nice. 29 1/2 out of 40 points.

3. Drop on recall
This is an exercise Quigley really likes, so he generally does well. 1/2 point off for a crooked sit after the Finish. 29 1/2 points.

4. Retrieve on Flat
He was a little bit slower than the judges usually like, and we had another slightly crooked sit, but got 18 1/2 out of 20 points.

5. Retrieve over High Jump
I bungled this one with my terrible dumbbell throwing. I threw way too far (all the way to the end of the ring, instead of about 20 feet from our position) and Quigley didn’t see where it went, so he took the jump but came back without the dumbbell. NQ since the dog did not retrieve.

6. Broad Jump
We practiced this a lot during the last week, since Quigley bombed on the broad jump in rally at the last AKC trial. Overall it was nice, but he didn’t come into the front straight and also had a crooked sit at the end, so we got 17 1/2 out of 20 points.

7. Long Sit
NQ, as I already mentioned above, but he did stay in his spot instead of getting up and trying to find me, so I’m happy.

If Quigley had done the retrieve correctly and not gone down on the long sit, we would have ended up with a score somewhere in the mid-180s, which would have been great.

One lady who remembered us from last year commented on how much Quigley had improved, and the judge said a lot of very nice things about him too!