Archive for November, 2009

Eric and Cali with her 3rd place and qualifying ribbons.

Eric and Cali with her 3rd place and qualifying ribbons.

Cali started out strong at the Coyote Cluster show on Friday in Tucson with a 3rd place finish and a respectable qualifying score of 185 in Open Obedience. This is her first of teh required threee qualifying scores (or “legs”) required to earn her AKC Companion Dog Excellent (CDX) title.

Unfortunately theremainder of the weekend didn’t go quite as well with Cali failing to qualify the remaining 3 days. Conditions were less than perfect and frankly at 9 years old, I think she was just getting tired. We’ve done a lot of intensive training over the past couple of weeks, and I suspect that she is just a bit burned out.

So I’ll give her a week or so off and then back up in her training and work on attention and focus some more with her before starting to fine tune the Open exercises again. She knows all of the open exercises and is able to perform them perfectly. The problem seems to be that she is easily distracted when competing by things going on in and around the ring.

I can hardly blame her for loosing focus when a big fat pigeon landed in front of her in the ring in the middle of her drop-on recall exercise at the OPDT trial 2 weeks ago. Heck, that even made me loose focus. But at the Coyote Cluster this weekend she was distracted by routine things happening outside the ring. A golf cart going by, a dog outside an adjacent ring that looked like Jack, the wind. So it’s back to attention and proofing working with distractions. So if you see some crazy guy and his Springer Spaniel walking in circles in front of a busy grocery store or at a shopping mall around Tucson, AZ… it’s just us. Please feel free to come up to say hello and be a distraction for Cali!!!!!

Posted by Eric on 16 November 2009 at 3:38 pm under News.
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Presenting Windfall's Perpetual Motion RN (aka Jack)

Presenting Windfall's Perpetual Motion RN (a.k.a. Jack)

Jack earned his Rally Novice title at the Coyote Cluster this weekend in Tucson, AZ with three back-to-back qualifying scores Friday, Saturday and Sunday. While not quite good enough for placements, all three scores were respectable runs in the 80s. Frankly we’re a bit surprised that his did so well this weekend. At his first trial a couple weeks ago he proved that at 19 months he wasn’t really mentally ready for the ring by failing to qualify - spectacularly -  both days. But Michelle has been working hard on attention and heeling since then and it paid off wonderfully.

This was also Jack’s first showing in the conformation ring but the results weren’t quite as good as Rally. He did win Reserve Winners 3 out of 4 days, but hoestly those were only becuase there were only 2 dogs. But our expectations and intentions for this show were not to earn points. Our intention was to give him some real show ring experience and the get an assessment from several judges on his potential in conformation.
 
Katie Webb handles Jack in the conformation ring - 11/14/2009

Katie Webb handles Jack in the conformation ring - 11/14/2009

All in all the feedback we got was about what we expected. Jack is still very physically immature and can’t compete against more mature dogs at this point. And he still has a significant overbite, which may be his downfall in conformation. He moves beautifully in the ring though, with much credit to his talented handler Katie Webb. Katie knows how to show him to his best advantage.

 
So we’ll have to let Jack grow up a bit before we try him in the confirmation ring again. He needs to fill out a bit, and hopefully the overbite will correct itself as his jaw grows. We got Jack for perfromance events, not conformation, so we won’t be terribly upset if he never gets his conformation championship. But  we are comitted to giving him the chnace and if he turns out to have the potential (once he matures a bit more), we’ll continue to show him through to a championship. But for now, it’s back to obedience training, beginning agility, and maybe a foray into flyball (which we’re sure he’ll be a natural at considering that he loves running and balls more than anything).

Posted by Eric on 16 November 2009 at 3:17 pm under News.
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