This saturday was the GSD July show, and, more importantly, Obi's 2nd birthday :o)
He had lots of treats and gifts from friends and family, including a 'birthday biscuit' from Louise and Paul which went down well!
In general, the competition didn't go to well for Obi and I, we came second in the Agility but to be honest, it was a pretty awful round, Obi ran off both contacts, and half way round he thought he'd finished and ran out of the ring to get his ball lol!
When Obi blew his contacts, I let him carry on-very naughty I know! Luckily enough, he knocked a pole, otherwise he would have won and I'd have been mortified to go up to Novice with a round like that haha!
Much better (even though we were eliminated!) was the jumping round, unfortunately I didn't turn him quick enough and he took an extra jump near the beginning but the rest was really nice, and I managed to cross behind him in the weaves without even a glance back from him, which I was thrilled with :o)
Power and Speed- what a disaster! He performed his Dog Walk contact beautifully, then blew the A frame one-so we did it again (after asking the very nice judge of course!) and he blew it again! Very unusual! So we did it agin and he crawled down and stopped at the bottom :o( Not ideal but we weren't doing it again!!
We continued on and poor Obi crashed straight through the Spread, which was set at full width. I was convinced when I saw it while walking the course that he would nevr make it and he didn't :o( I then felt guilty for making him attempt it and completely mucked up the jumping bit-Aaargh!
The last course of the day was the Steeplechase, which was a nice easy 'snail shell' type course which we managed to get around clear, though we didn't get a placing-looking at the video, the huge wide turns are slowing Obi up ALOT-we really must start working on that!
I also ran the Steeplechase with Scooby, and we came 2nd :o) What a great dog he is, I always love doing agility with him, his enthusiasm knows no limits lol!
We also ran the Novice jumping course together, which I think we got round without an elimination (although with Scoobs it all happens so fast I'm not sure lol!) but boy were the poles flying-Hurricane Scooby passed through haha!
Back to Obi's contacts-on sunday at the training day, things went from bad to worse, I asked him to go over the A Frame, and he went up the up side and sort of slid/crawled slowly down the other side.
Clearly something had confused the poor boy-but what?!
After racking my brains for the rest of the day the answer came to me that evening, when my thoughts couldn't have been further from agility.
A few days before we had been at a training session trying to perform a section that we just could not get right-and it was A frame-jump-tight turn-jump, we tried over and over, and I could tell my boy just couldn't get what he was doing wrong :o( With hindsight I think the sequence physically was difficult for a large dog who hasn't been trained to turn tight, and I shouldn't have pushed it as much as I did, but I suppose you live and learn!
Anyway, I'm pretty sure that he linked the confusion and frustration of that exercise with the A Frame and just isn't sure what I want him to do on it any more.
Easily fixed hopefully, we have been practicing targeting again on the flat and stairs, with high value rewards-big chunks of chicken, and we will hopefully be able to transfer that back to the A Frame at training tonight.
The rest of the training day on sunday was really great, he performed some lovely rear and front crosses, and his weaving was fab, I was really proud of him :o)
Well, onwards and upwards, our next competition is the Kennel Club International in just over 4 weeks-EEK!
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