It's Halloween time again. This year I'm not suffering from unbearable morning sickness so I get to enjoy holiday activities with the family.
Last Saturday the family went to a Halloween party put on by the city of Houston. Usually Pup Scouts has a booth there and we hand out information and candy to the kids. This year there was just way too much going on to organize a booth in time. So we just went to enjoy it.
I took Phlox along to work on his manners and focus. As usually we had many people commenting on how beautiful, smart, well behaved and awesome he is. Because he gets so much attention I get to educate a lot of people on what these dogs are really like.
The party went so well that Phlox will be accompanying the kids trick or treating.
Enough talk here are a couple of pictures
He was really getting into the Halloween spirit with those laser eyes.
Day 1:
Violet completely and totally NQed in Utility. She did however bring back the right articles one small victory.
Phlox is still getting over excited in new places so it was a rough start. I was pretty sure everything was going to fall apart in the ring. He ended up doing a pretty good job and coming away with a score of 100 and first place!
I was pleased with the score and our placement but not at all happy with his performance. He was distant and distracted.
Day 2:
Violet was fabulous! Her heel kind of sucked but we went through every exercise with out incident and as we neared the end I really thought we would qualify. On the very last go out I gave a bad hand signal and she ran off to the corner of the ring. She took the wrong jump and there went our qualifying score. Oh well she really did do a fantastic job and I am very pleased with her. I'll be increasing the training in new areas so that next month we can get a few legs.
Phlox was a little more calm today. Unfortunately that did not translate well in the ring. It didn't help that the judge could not hear my reply to "Are you ready?" so we just stood there staring at each other getting frustrated. Phlox lost focus and that was that. We ended up with a 96 and our second rally novice leg.
It may be hard to understand why I am not happy with Phlox's performances this weekend even though his scores were pretty good. I just know that he and I can do so much better as a team. I've tricked myself into thinking that training in 3 or 4 locations regularly will be sufficient. It isn't and I won't make that mistake again.
Since Phlox has his very first Rally trial this weekend I thought it was time to try him out in a new environment. So a show and goin' we did go. Phlox did really well on Saturday. We ran a Excellent course due to time. I was a little confused by some of the new signs and Phlox didn't know all of the exercises but we hobbled through it looking pretty good.
Something I did notice is that Phlox is getting over excited when he enters a room with dogs already in it. He whines, snorts and fusses whiling standing a little too tall for my liking. All Saturday Phlox was distracted and wanted nothing more than to get to the other dogs and people.
Sunday I ran Violet through the Utility exercises. She did pretty well but I totally fudged the signal exercise by getting it confused with the stand for exam. I also kept stumbling on the ring matting.
No video because I ran out of memory.
I brought Phlox back later for novice and beginner novice.
Novice was nice. Not great. Not stunning. Just nice. I love seeing the video because it really points out what needs work.
I was going to break it all down for you but chances are you can see what needs fixing.
There is no video of Beginner novice. It was an ok run but by that time Phlox was tired and distracted.
We did make huge strides in his excitement on Sunday. I went prepared to work through it. I spent a few minutes working with him entering the building and walking past the crated dogs. It worked. He was calm and quiet the rest of the afternoon.
Now for a week of training before the upcoming show. Violet will be doing scent articles every day and Phlox will be working out doors on many different surfaces.
