Mika and Wall-e trial June 12, 2011

FANTASTIC day!

Wall-e Starters Jumpers
18.97 seconds, fastest time yet!! Q, 1st, and Best Run in Special; so Wall-e is now in Adv. Jumpers.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWhbhP97x_M



Mika Masters Gamblers
Good run; Mika hit all three of her dog walk contacts in the opening, and right in the middle of the yellow too! No gamble.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUzL2juEN8Q



Mika Masters Jumpers
Q (and 1s); can you believe it!? But more importantly, we had fun and I felt so connected with my girl!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DjsT6kKa9IM



Wall-e Starters Standard 1
Wall-e's very first Standard run, ever. He watched me so well. Highlights: he did the teeter (wasn't sure if he would jump off or not, even though we've worked through his little teeter problem), stayed down on the table (I thought he might lift his elbows off), and didn't pop out of the weaves! Q, 1st, and Best Run!
You might notice that he sniffed on the table after the table count was finished. This was because a dog (a female dog, actually!) had peed on the table a couple of dogs before.
As for his contacts, they were good. On the dog walk, he stopped in more of a 1-rear-toe-on position instead of 2on2off; only his back toes stayed on the contact. He realized this and backed up to go into the proper position, but backed up a bit too far so that his whole body was actually on the contact. So I waited for him to go forward again...and he gave a cute little impatient woof as he stepped forward to finally go into "correct" 2o2o! His A-frame was nice, but for some reason he let his butt plop back into a Sit after he stopped in his 2o2o. Still, it was pretty fast! Overall, I was so, so pleased with his very first Standard run!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dl_3t5Qy4Ck



Wall-e Starters Standard 2
Another nice run! I did sacrifice a Q in order to train in the ring; he slipped a teeny bit as he went up the DW, and then forgot to stop in 2o2o when he descended the down plank. My initial impulse was to keep going, but then I stopped myself in order to ask Wall-e to hop in 2o2o position.
My personal rule with my dogs is to always, always keep going whenever they make mistakes (especially at trials)...except when it comes to Wall-e's 2o2o. I have to maintain criteria or else he'll think that he can do running contacts (which I'd LOVE, but I know that they'd break down over time). I was originally planning on bringing Wall-e back in a loop of obstacles to the beginning of the DW, and then doing the whole DW again; but the judge told us during the briefing that if we did this, we'd get a whistle, which might have freaked Wall-e out...so that was out! You'll see in the video that he had no problem at all with hopping back on the end of the DW.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dVwe_S2DhE



Wall-e Starters Standard 3
Another fun run with the Wall-e boy! I was pleasantly surprised when he came back to me after the second tunnel, at 0:14 in the video. We actually did a very similar sequence in training last week, and I didn't use a strong enough off-arm signal, so Wall-e took the DW the first time. But at this trial I knew that I had to really use my off-arm, and Wall-e read it right away and took the jump near me! The rest of the run was great as well. He could have had a faster AF, but we'll work on that in training.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q62A-NhPQHI