Monday, September 29, 2008

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. :)

No comments: