Seita

I too did a double trial at Caboolture yesterday and learnt that I need to fix my finishes big time! They cost us an OC leg yesterday! We finished the first trial with 181 points and aside from the points lost in signals all other points were on crooked finishes, I don't know what got into Ella yesterday, they were worse than normal! LOL And in the 2nd trial we had a substantial for one jump a few points off for signals and some trouble with our articles so came out of the ring on a pass but not a very good one but then the little witch decided that down stays are optional and blew it anyway! I clearly need to fix my down stays when there are other dogs running around doing "exciting" things! We've never had trouble with this before UD and it's only now after a year of trialling in UD that she's gone and got herself all obsessed with things like other dogs doing retrieves and the sound of articles! Guess what we'll be working on big time for the next few weeks till our next trial!

:thumbsup: The three dogs in the team would rank amongst the best open dogs in OZ and today they all put in terrific open rounds after a long day of competition. AND they all managed to do their stays. Raising a glass to Maverick, Brookie and Scoota :D It was very lovely work and I agree these are definitely some of the top open dogs in the country!! Well I have a brag too! Yesterday we had a mixed bag of results in UD but today Ella put it all together and won the UD1 ring at the National Obedience Trial with her fourth OC leg to boot!!! Soooo pleased with my girlie!!!! :D

Take her dinner down to the oval and ask for a seekback or scent work for her dinner I bet she will get it right But she has been getting it right in training. She did a perfect one at the same grounds 2 hours after the trial yesterday! I'm hoping that by pulling her out after the seekback and not letting her to the other fun exercises she'll get the point that she needs to do it right! Fingers crossed for this weekend! LOL

alright gurus! We've had a dreadful weekend of trialling, the little bitch has gone back to running around not really scenting for her article in the seekback so both last night and this morning we withdrew after the seekback and put her away. I did one with her today a couple of hours after the trial with somone calling it for me and she did it perfectly, I rewarded and put her away. She did everything else nicely in training during the week but now I'm not sure what I should do this week in the lead up to the states/nationals. Do I continue training her and drilling her on the trouble spots or do I spell her completely and do nothing at all with her? I've asked several people and most think I should do nothing with her as she knows the work but I'm not sure I can do that! LOL So what would everyone else do??? The wine is looking like a great option right now!

Or what dog you'll be bringing! LOL

so far so good, Ella's working quite consistently in training and last saturday's trial was proof that my training is paying off (if only it weren't for that blasted SFE). I'm trialling this weekend so we'll see what might need last minute fixing after that!

Well done and fingers crossed for that first pass soon! I drove past yesterday morning and was sooo glad that I didn't enter that one! I had entered a show instead but didn't do that either. Yesterday was just disgusting! I have a funny not completely dog training related story! We were at my brother-in-laws place last night and were being silly with his kids, my OH asked the 5 year old a simple maths question (2+2 or something like that) and he got it wrong so my OH goes "whoops" to him instead of saying that's not right try again. "Whoops" is my NRM for Ella and clearly my constant bugging the OH to get his commands correct is paying off! I was in stiches when he said this!!

I'd say that would be a good idea. We're supposed to have a dry winter but you never know at the moment!

Sooo bummed after tonight's trial! Ella worked beautifully in the ring work and was sitting a nice OC leg until the groups when the dog beside her in the SFE stared at her the whole time and then when it's handler returned to it he came very close to Ella and she kind of freaked out and moved away from him. I still don't quite know what she did or why but she moved completely! It was such a nice run out in the rain and she worked really nicely... sooo disappointing!

let me entertain you - robbie williams that western theme song that you hear when the guys are about to draw their guns at each other old macdonald? almost anything off Glee! umm out of ideas now :-)

when they are acting normally again! So it depends on the dog, Ella was back in the obedience ring 10 days after leaving the vet clinic after coming down with a tick. And when she had a tooth out she was back to normal within 3 days. But Ella is a work-a-holic and every dog heals differently. You know your dog and what is normal for him so just go with what feels right!

Nope ;) I forgot that I posted this. I don't have this problem either, Ella always has plenty of oomph! But I was chatting to someone at a trial on the weekend who thinks their dog needs a spell from the ring every so often to keep him fresh and keen. I've heard this from a few people and was wondering if anyone else found similar issues. My issue is more trying to keep me fresh and keen and interested, I get a bit over trialling every weekend!

Does anyone else find that when they are competing and training alot (like trialling every weekend) their dogs start to lose a bit interest or oomph when in ring?

I don't have a choice! I've only got the one dog! But I think not knowing which one you'll be taking would be crap, I take it you've entered a few and will decide just before you leave for the airport?

well we had a trial this morning, not soo good for Ella. She did a few silly things (wrong glove whoops) and then much to my horror sat up as I was walking into the ring after the drop stay!!!! It was very obvious today that I haven't been training our seekback (had some trouble finding it) or our groups at all and that we clearly need to do lots of work on distraction training as she was a little miss busy body today! We had our first go at Rally-O today for the heck of it and got a qually there which helped make me feel a bit better LOL! I'm going to have to embark on a serious training program with Ella if I want to do well at the State and National Trials next month! Lot of day time work to be done too!

Start something random like DWD stuff! Apparently there are something like 16 different heel positions around your body, you could try teach a few of those. Of what about some silly tricks like wave, shake hands, count, cover nose, high 5. Or some super awesome rear end stuff like teach the dog to isolate an individual foot and target something with it.

Wow! People dress up for trials??? I wear my normal old joggers, a pair of jeans or track pants (waterproof) if it's a bit wet or windy and usually my obedience club's shirt but if I can't be bothered finding it or it's not clean I'll just wear any old T-shirt or Polo. My dogs all have black leads and collars and I pretty much never buy coloured ones so they can never clash with each other! LOL Just wondering if any of you have seen my thread in this forum about your training schedule during the week while you are leading up to a trial or are regularly trialling. I haven't had many responses and would love to know what everyone else does!

An article in this month's dog world got me thinking about what other people do during the week when they are trialling regularly. The article was written by one of QLD's top triallers and in it he mentions that he does 2 formal sessions a week (by formal he means with rings set up etc) plus other informal sessions as well. That got me thinking as I never ever (ok maybe once every 2 or 3 months) do a session in a ring and I am flat out training each exercise even once per week! So what does everyone else do? How many times do you train, in what sort of environments/locations, when do you train in the lead up to a trial etc? I try to train each exercise once during the week in the lead up to a trial and very rarely do all exercises in the same session. I use different locations, sometimes the club grounds, sometimes the park next to a busy play ground, sometimes the dog park etc. I normally only do 2 sessions during the week and if I find time for a third it's usually only working on positions, presents, finishes etc. I find that I've been doing less and less lately as things seem to break when I overtrain them.

As long as your dog can do it then the judge can't dock you points for it. And by do it I mean they move their rear end and not their front as they swivel around beside you so that they end up in line with you still after the turn. It can look sloopy if it's not done right and most old fashioned clubs/trainers/triallers don't know/care how to teach rear end awareness so their's always look sloppy which is probably why your instructor pulled you up on it. I know at my obedience club I'm the only one who does a pivot but it's slowly creeping in now that more people are doing DWD and Rally-O. I'm pretty sure the rules say you can do either.

I always do the turns for articles and gloves but then reward anything after that and very very rarely add a finish to the end. When I was in the lower classes I pretty much never did the heel forward bit before an exercise. I have started adding a heel forward and stand before the send away to the box as Ella tends to be quite sloopy with this and I think it looks bad even though it's not judged. I try to mix things up as much as possible so I don't get anticipation from little miss smarty pants! lol

I went away this weekend to do a double trial in Hervey Bay and had a good day! In the first trial yesterday we won the UD ring and got our 3rd OC leg in the process! We managed a 2nd place in the second trial but no qually unfortunately the little witch anticipated for one of the articles and decided she liked glove 3 better than the one I actually sent her too! She worked really nicely in both trials and I'm very pleased with my little girlie!

I don't. I left before presentations because the novice judge was taking forever to judge her 3 dogs. I waited around for about 20mins after my groups finished thinking 3 novice dogs won't take long but I was wrong... they hadn't even started novice groups when I left! I think I ended up on 2nd place but am not completely sure.

Your judge was soft LL!!! I was in the ring at the same time and we powered on despite the very very heavy rain! I had to really try to keep a straight face during scent discrimination because Ella was looking up at me and blinking and squinting and clearly not enjoying herself because of all the water in her eyes! Poor girl, she still worked like a trooper despite the torrential rain!

it's not quite a brag but I trialled last night with Ella and it bucketed down with rain while we were in the ring. Ella probably did her best work to date despite the rain and the poor girl was barely able to see due to the water in her eyes. She blew both directed jumps in different ways but got full marks for everything else which I was really proud of. She's really testing me with this directed jumping, so far she's found at least 5 different ways to blow this... I'm just hoping she's got it all out of her system now and is ready to start doing them properly again! LOL

If you want to learn quality tracking try one of the IPO clubs. I looked into the IPO stuff, but it seems they only allow very few breeds to compete in this, so do they do training only for their tiny list of allowed breeds, or can anyone train with them for fun? I know the Metro sports dog club (not the metro obedience club) allows pretty much all breeds of dogs to train with them... and I was under the impression that the Gold Coast IPO club was the same.