Since most of our classmates were at the first day of For Your Canine’s APDT trials on January 23, Freya and I basically got a private lesson that day to help us prepare for the following day’s trials. Allan set up a practice course for us designed by one of the judges that I’d be trialing under on Sunday. I was able to view this video to identify areas to work on before doing another run-through. Allan posted a video of that run-through to his blog.

No course map today since it was a course used in an actual trial for which I did not get permission to publicly post.

Start: I still want to get better attention from Freya at the start. She does now seem to know that we ain’t goin’ nowhere until she makes eye contact with me. Our next run started off with better attention.

25. Spiral Right – Dog Outside. She’s lagging, partly because she’s not paying full attention to me, and partly because I’m not being interesting enough nor am I giving her enough cues to stay with me. Our teamwork is much better in the next run.

8. Left Turn, 13. 360-Degree Right Turn. I’m surprised we don’t lose more points on turns in trials. We did a little better in the next run.

2. Halt-Sit-Stand. Freya has never had a pretty stand. I would like to be able to stand her with a verbal command alone and will work toward that. She does not move around much which is an improvement.

20. Fast Pace, 21. Normal Pace. Still need to work on making pace changes more noticeable. Varying the length, even more so than the speed, of my own steps seems to be the key.

17. Call Front, Finish Right. Slow and crooked sit. Sits seem to be the current problem area. On the next run, I gave her both verbal and signal cues to help her sit quickly and in the correct place.

11. 270-Degree Right Turn, 10. About “U” Turn. See above; we really have to work on polishing our turns.

23. Halt – 90 Degree Pivot Right – Halt + 5. Halt – Sit – Walk Around. This is something that I believe exists only in APDT Rally. Signs can be “married” as in this example. The ending Halt with Sit of sign 23 is used as the beginning Halt-Sit of sign 5; it is not performed again. So the sequence is Halt with Sit – 90 Degree Pivot Right where dog moves with handler – Halt with Sit – handler Walk Around dog. We did ok.

13. 360-Degree Right Turn. See previous comments on turns.

28. Halt – Turn Right – 1 Step – Halt + 3. Halt – Sit – Down. Another set of “married” signs. I want to phase out the excessive body English for the Down signal, but Freya’s Down has not been too consistent, so I will stick with a firm tone and exaggerated signal for now.

9. About Turn Right, 14. 360-Degree Left Turn, 8. Left Turn, 10. About “U” Turn. See previous comments on turns.

Bonus: Exercise 1. Halt – Leave Dog – Call To Heel. This is one of our better bonus exercises, but could use some polishing. I’d like her to come in closer and straighter.

This is the first session where I switched to a 4-foot leash. I found it helped me greatly in keeping a loose leash. Even when I tied knots in my 6-foot leash, I found myself folding it too short or grabbing it too short and below the knots. It may not have been the greatest idea in general to switch leashes the day before a trial, but in terms of avoiding point losses for tight leash, it was very successful.

As always, you can see more videos of our rally obedience classmates, as well as Allan’s other training clients, on his YouTube channel.

(NaBloPoMo | February ’10: 3 of 28)