So last weekend I took both dogs to La Crosse, WI to trial at Family Dog Center's new arena. I have gone there many times with Zoe and we love the small atmosphere and the great people there. This was my first time bringing Breeze and gave me the opportunity to test her hotel manners and see how she did with a full weekend of runs.
The hotel part was easy - Breeze settled in nicely and was not worried about sounds in the hallway, etc and slept nicely through the night. When Zoe first started traveling, it took her a little while to get used sounds from other people, but now she is fine.
I have to say I learned quite a lot about Breeze at this trial and I have several things to work on now. One of our biggest challenges is just getting her out to new places. As with other new places, she started off the day sniffing the arena and completely disregarding the game. I think we maybe did three obstacles on the first run. The second run went slightly better. She sequenced about 6-7 obstacles before I lost her again. She did her contacts, but her nose was pretty much attached to the contact the whole way. I am hesitant to say this was all stress related. She didn't show any signs of stress before the run - it more seemed like blowing me off. So before the third run, I did some targeting with her and a lot of tricks and obedience. If she got a little better with each run, I would be happy, but I certainly wasn't expecting and qualifying runs.
The third run was Snooker, which was tough for us because once she did something out of order, we were whistled off the course. Rather, I would have liked her to be able to do a few things successfully and then leave like in a regular run. To my surprise, she seemed much more engaged and made it through the whole course without errors. I was really proud of her and rewarded her to make sure she knew good things happen when she plays as a team.
After that, she was much more engaged. There were a couple of sniffs here and there, but I was always able to get her back to me and continue the course. The next day started off much better. She qualified in standard and jackpot and was starting to get the hang of things. I had to pull her from a run during the day because she got spooked by something, but she recovered from that pretty quickly. The last two runs were great - almost Qs by a mere few points.
So besides distractions, the things we need to work on are contacts on different surfaces. Breeze has been trained almost exclusively on rubber contacts. The surfaces here were a bit more slippery, so she had some trouble stopping for her 2o/2o contact. Also, Breeze needs to learn how to decelerate and control her body. In the video below of her standard run, she over runs a few jumps and though she enters the weaves correctly, she couldn't stop to finish them.
However, in the few trials she has done, she is doing MUCH better at sequencing and gaining obstacle focus. I also saw improvements in her weaving. She had awesome start lines all weekend and best of all, her stamina kept up for her first full weekend of agility. I am excited to see how she progresses this fall. We have two trials on dirt coming up and I am prepared for her to be distracted again. But hopefully it will be short-lived and we will be able to work through that.
Meanwhile, Zoe was my rock star this weekend. She had nothing but perfect runs and is pretty close to getting her second C-ATCH. It is such a sigh of relief to run her after running Breeze. Zoe and I are at the point where we really trust each other. If Zoe is running slow, I no longer freak out and I have faith that she will speed up. She knows her job out there and tries so hard to do the right thing. The best thing about her runs this weekend is that she did all of her weaves on the first try and even had a little speed. This bodes well for our journey in achieving a CATE in CPE, where all runs need to be clean. Here is a video of one of her standard runs:
Next up is a light NADAC trial at the Soccer Blast: just 4 runs for each. I am trying to finish up Zoe's open level titles and give Breeze a bit more practice. It should be a low key weekend before doing a couple more trials in September!
