Two Novice A Legs

Last weekend we had a trial in Southaven MS. We entered two runs in Novice A obedience. This trial was very big, we had all the obedience dogs, the rally dogs, and tons of conformation dogs everywhere. I had forgotten how noisy a show can become with conformation dogs. There was hairdryers blowing everywhere and the conformation dogs barked 24/7. We drove up Friday for a match, but by the time we got there the match was filled up, so I ended up just letting Joey walk around and get used to all the noise. We did our run Saturday morning and Joey was still a little nervous with all the noise so he lagged some, however I was very happy to see how solid his stand for exam was. After all that trouble he gave me the stand is now his steadiest exercise. Joey did his sit and down stays perfectly and we qualified and got third place with a score of 189.5. 

Joey was much more used to the crazy show environment on Sunday and he seemed much more relaxed. On Sunday we ran at the very end of the show, and everyone was packing up and leaving so it was very detracting. However, Joey did even better Sunday than he did on Saturday. He lagged much less and seemed more relaxed in the ring. The only thing that could have used some improving was the recall. Joey did a very good example of Newton's law of inertia. "An object in motion (Joey) tends to stay in motion unless acted upon by a force (my knees)." We have to work on his recall. Everyone who watches his recall says Joey is so cute the way he runs on the recall but his speed leads to problems such as bumping me or sitting crooked. Anyways, Joey did his stays perfectly again, and we qualified with a score of 189.5 (again). I kind of felt a deja vu there. Our Judge on Sunday, Howard Gladstein, was very nice, but he graded pretty strictly. However, out of the seven dogs also entered in Novice A, everyone but me and Joey got disqualified, so we managed to win first place.



Overall, I am very happy with Joey. There are still some little things I can work on but I feel that Joey learned how to work for me under stressful and distracting situations.