Jan 3rd-5th 2020

Lucky and I had a little over a month to get ready for this weekend once I finished training for stock with Marshal. We have done rally before and she did an excellent job so I wasn’t too worried about the time crunch. But the weekend offered more than rally it also offered obedience. All I knew about obedience was it required a long sit (3minutes) and a long down (5minutes). So that is what we practiced most.

Lucky only needed one more qualifying score in rally to have her novice title and then move up to advanced. In advanced we have to walk through the course off leash and after some looking I found out there would be an off leash portion for obedience too so that became a part of our daily training.

We finally made it to the first day of competition. We got there early so I could watch the higher classes and so Lucky had time to relax and play a little outside after being in the car for an hour.

For rally 200 is the highest possible score, a 195 or higher earns an X (excellent) score, and 170 or above is a qualifying score. You need 3 qualifying scores for a title and if you get 3 X scores you get an X title.

For our very first rally run of the weekend we managed a score of 192! That also earned Lucky her RN (rally novice) title. We were so close to a X score I could taste it. Instead of moving up to advanced I decided to keep us in novice so we could attempt to get X scores the next two days. But the next day she made a mistake on a sign she usually does perfectly and I made the mistake of not redoing it.

The judge puts a star in random signs throughout the course and if done improperly are worth double points lost. The sign Lucky messed up and I chose not to redo cost us 20 points. After we finished the judge told me that if I had redone it instead of continuing the course I would have only lost 3 points and been able to have our first X qualifying score. Instead we barely had a qualifying score at 172. So on the last day I was still after a X score but a little more relaxed about it because I might not be able to get to another event in the amount of days necessary to complete her title. (90 days after the novice title is completed) We did really well on the last day finishing again with a 192. Our high scores on Friday and Sunday along with our qualifying score on Saturday earned us the high in trial rally novice champion award!

Each day after everyone had gotten through rally the arena was re-organized and then obedience was started. The novice class is the last to go so I was able to watch everyone else and learn a little more about how obedience trials are run. Scoring is very similar to rally but the biggest difference is that out of the 6 stages if even one falls just below a non qualifying score then technically all 6 are failed.

The 6 stages are; heel on leash, heel off leash, stand for exam, recall, long sit, and long down. The heeling portions are very similar to rally just a little bit shorter and simpler. The stand for exam was tricky because Lucky loves anyone who will feed or pet her and she is not allowed to move while the judge touches her. Day one we fail because I thought I could use hand signals and a verbal command but really was only supposed to use one on recall and Lucky got too excited for belly rubs and rolled over during the exam. But we discovered that the long sit is only 1 minute and the long down is only 2 minutes for novice so Lucky did those easily. Day two we manage to squeak by with a qualifying score and land first place thanks to our long stays. Day three everything was going smoothly until recall. One of the stipulations of recall is the dog has to be close enough to the handler to touch. Well Lucky saw a friend behind me who was a little more interesting and stopped just out of reach. We passed everything else beautifully but that one mistake made us not qualify. The last day was hard for all of the dogs, out of the 12 competing in the top class only 3 qualified.

Lucky now has her rally novice title plus bonus points and is two qualifying scores away from her companion dog obedience title.