Freestyle Brag

I was excited yesterday to get an e-mail from the Musical Dog Sport Association (MDSA) telling me that Teddy and I qualified for our first leg towards our Novice title. Woohoo! We entered MDSA's very first video competition back in June, and I have been waiting anxiously ever since to find out the results. I felt like a kid waiting for Christmas to come. But we finally received our score sheets via e-mail. I doubt our new routine will be ready by the November deadline for their next video competition, so we will hopefully earn our next leg next June.

Now for a Training Update:
Teddy and I are having a busy fall. There is so much to train right now, and lots of trials and opportunities to work. Here's a summary of what we are up to.
Obedience- I think we finally had a breakthrough with our leather utility articles. We have been able to do 5 metal articles for a while now, but we have been having issues with the leather. The other day, Teddy picked up the wrong article and then spit it out on his own and went back for the correct one. I think (and hope) that it finally clicked for him. We are having good luck so far, but I am going to stick with only two articles for a little while longer. Teddy is also retrieving gloves really well, and we are working on our go outs. One of the main things that I want to work on is our heeling. We'll never make it in the utility ring unless we can tighten up our heeling. We'll be doing rally again at the end of October.
Agility- After doing zoomies in the trial ring, we are back in class working hard on motivation and short sequences. Teddy's been doing great in class, and I've been so proud that he is coming back to me for more without giving up on me when I make a handling error. He's really trying. We are entered in a USDAA trial in a couple of weeks, so we'll see how we are really progressing. I'm hoping that it will help us to get in the ring more than twice per day. We are entered in an AKC trial in November, and I'm considering another in December, but I'm going to wait to decide about that.
Freestyle- Today is a deadline to enter a video competition. Since we just did not have time to film our routine, I'll have to wait until December to enter the next one. I want to get our filming out of the way early this time. We are also beginning a new routine, but we have a lot of choreographing left to go. I can't wait to finish this routine though and already have the costume and music. I'm excited that we will be doing freestyle demos in a couple of weeks at a big regional dog show. Last night I ran down to our training club to practice one of our old routines because I had forgotten some of the choreography.

I think that about covers it. So much to do and so little time when you have a versatile fun-loving poodle boy!

Rally-O Weekend

This past weekend, Teddy and I entered Rally at an obedience trial about an hour away from home. The great part about rally is that it gives us ring exposure and gives us something to do at trials since we are in between finishing our open obedience title and beginning to show in utility. I'm also hoping that it will help us improve our heeling, but that hasn't really happened yet.

We entered both Rally Advanced and Excellent on both days and got legs #5 and 6 towards our RAE title, so it was a great weekend. On Saturday, we got an 86 in Excellent. It was my fault that our score was so low: I should have retried a sign, but I chose to go on. It's one of those bad judgements you make on the fly. We did better in Advanced with a score of 98. Sunday, we got a 97 in Excellent and a 98 in Advanced with a 4th place.

While I'm thrilled with the outcome, I'm still not really happy with our performance. The judge was kind and light with her pen, but I feel like our scores really should have been lower. Our heeling has just not gotten much better, with Teddy not feeling compelled to be glued in heel position. He wanders too far to my left. We need to improve on this before we can even consider entering the utility ring. There is always something to train, but in the meanwhile, I'll bask in our 2 leg weekend. :)