Our Obedience Novice A Debut

What a beautiful, sunny day! About 80 degrees and sunny - a great day for a walk. However I don't walk Red on trial days - I need all the energy from him I can get!

In Rally and Obedience, the higher classes go first in the morning. So for Obedience, they do Utility B then Utility A, then Open B then Open A, then Novice B and Novice A. Since I have never titled a dog before, we are in Novice A - the greenest of the green! Which means we also are the last class to go.

Based on the entries, I estimated we wouldn't go into the ring til between 3:30pm-4pm, so I didn't want to get there too early. I've found that Red does better with very little down time. The best is if we get there, play some tug and do a couple exercises, put him in the crate for 10-15 minutes, then get him back out and do our run. The longer we wait, the flatter he is. So I waned to get there between 2pm-2:30pm, so I had enough time to get him in and crated, and catch the Novice A walkthrough.

We got there at about 2:10pm. I left Red in the car while I carried in my bag, my chair and the crate. I walked in and you could seriously hear a pin drop. I felt like I was even walking too loud. It was a little off-putting to have it so quiet... I'm used to training and working with a lot of distractions. I wondered if this would be a good or bad thing.

It was sits/downs for Open B, so they still had to do the ribbons and go through Open A, so we had some time to waste. I got Red out of the car and brought him in. His collar was jangling and I felt like we were the center of attention when we walked in. We got to the crate and he shook, which made his collar tags jangle even louder. I quickly took he collar off him. I felt like I couldn't even play tug or talk at a normal volume to give commands for warm up. I didn't like it at all. My friends who I train with were all there, so we all went in another room to chat.

I put Red away and just sat and watched. I had the heeling pattern memorized, so I hoped the judge would use the same one for Novice. After sits/downs and the ribbons for Open A, they went right into Novice B. Sam and Mally were the last in Novice B to go, and they were doin great until the off-leash heeling, then Mally stopped staying with her and they ended up NQ'ing. I felt so bad for Sam, but she kept it together and finished the run.

After Novice B, they do a walkthrough for Novice A as a courtesy to the newbs. I decided to leave Red in his crate while I did the walkthrough, and since there were only 4 people in my class and we were the last team to go, I would get him out as the dog ahead of us was going. The less time out, the better. I watched as Dawn and Atticus went, and they too were doing really well until they got to the off-leash heeling. And Atty did the same thing as Mally. Not sure what's up with the off-leash heeling today!

When the dog before us went into the ring, I took Red out and took him down to where everyone was standing near the entrance to the ring. His focus was great and I kept feeding him bits of hotdog, as people normally do to keep focus while you are on deck. The last treat should be fed just before you go into the ring.

I fed the last piece and the judge called us into the ring. On our way to the starting spot, Red coughed and up came a piece of hotdog onto the floor, which he quickly re-ate. The judge stopped us and said that she's sorry, but she's going to NQ us for food in the ring. She stood there and babbled about god knows what bullshit until finally said she would let us still run anyway even though it was an NQ. I was numb by this point, and extremely shaken and pissed off, but decided to take our run anyway. Red didn't know he had just cost us a Q, and we paid to take our run, so we were going to do it.

He was great. The heeling wasn't very attentive, but he stayed with me, and did really well. The figure 8 was good. Stand for exam, excellent. The off-leash recall was good, even though he didn't sit at the last halt - not that it mattered at that point anyway, so I told him to sit before I released. The recall was probably the best, straightest front on recall he's ever done. The finish wasn't great - a little behind me and crooked, but it didn't matter. We had, by far, the best run out of everyone and none of it mattered. Of course, I still praised like crazy - just like I normally would - in between exercises. Red did awesome. The judge told me I had a great working dog and I should be very proud of myself. I stiffly nodded without looking at her while mumbling a thanks and left the ring to give Red his jackpot.

We did sits and downs were were fine, except I had to yell at him a bit before we started because he kept straining on the leash to sniff the dog in front of us in line. At one point, the ring on the handle of my leather leash whacked him on the nose and he stopped acting like a tard. After the sit, he just about went into a down automatically, anticipating the next part, but I made him continue sitting until I told him to down. The down was fine. Lots of praise and he earned himself a new stuffy toy.

My shocked friends couldn't believe the judge would NQ a Novice A dog for that - give me a stern warning, or take 10 points off, but even other exhibitors were baffled. I'm really disappointed and I will definitely avoid showing under that judge again - sure, sure she did what she thought was right, but no one else seemed to agree that it was right, and I won't be supporting her with another entry again.

Oh well - nothing I could've done differently, except feed him his last treat with more time before going into the ring so he doesn't choke it up next time. We trial again tomorrow at the same place - different judge - so hopefully he'll do as well tomorrow as he did today! Minus the choking! It's almost worse NQ'ing this way than if we had thoroughly earned it.

Here's the video: It hurts just to watch it...