We are finally back home after a loooooong weekend. I’ve never driven this far for a trial. 315 miles each way is just too long, and Modesto isn’t exactly a destination that has much to offer. But it was an UKC show, a lot of fun, very nice judges and a really friendly, welcoming group of people.

• Friday, 4/16
  URO2 – 92/2nd place, URO3 – 95/1st place,
• Saturday, 4/17
  URO2 – 90/1st place, URO3 – 91/2nd place,
• Sunday, 4/18
  URO2 – 86/2nd place, URO3 – 90/1st place.

On Saturday and Sunday Quigley was a lot less cooperative than on Friday, so even though the scores were ok and the placements very nice, we only earned 8 points towards our UKC Rally Championship. No big deal though, I knew before we got started that this would be a long haul – it’s not as easy as “just” getting 10 double Qs for a RAE in AKC.

Since Quigley did so well on his out of sight exercises in Open last weekend in San Diego, I did two day-of-show entries, Friday and Saturday. As expected, we didn’t qualify (we have issues still to iron out before there’s a chance of a Q), but he stayed put in both trials on both out of sight exercises, and even without seeming worried about me leaving him.

It was a really nice, quiet park and I wanted to give him a chance at another low-stress opportunity as soon as possible to get a little more used to the Open routine and OOS, and this was definitely it, with two very green Open A dogs making up the highest class of the obedience trials – everyone else was in Novice A, B or C.

I decided that I do want to pursue that Open title in the long run (well, if possible both U-CDX and AKC too), but I’m not going to try again until at least towards the end of June, at the Great Western Terrier Association’s (AKC) specialty show in Long Beach. That’s a low-pressure show since they usually have very few obedience/rally entries, last year there was no Utility class (and no qualifiers in Open I think), and a relatively low-distraction environment. I’d feel less discouraged over bombing out there.

I don’t want to kill our progress by asking for too much entering him in a typical local show with a fairly big all-breed conformation circus with obedience squeezed in somewhere in a not so nice corner with lots of distractions.

Other than that, barring another UKC show popping up somewhere, we’ll continue working on our stuff until the September show in Santa Maria. Maybe I’ll try a run of AKC Graduate Novice.