You can check out all of the videos from Allan Ross’s Saturday morning Rally Obedience class at Best Friends/American Pet Motel on his YouTube channel. While you are here at Rottweilers Ate My Laptop, though, you can only watch Freya and me. We are selfish like that!
The APDT trial at For Your Canine is now less than a week away, so I will be making an extra effort to get to a Wednesday evening rally practice session, as well as working on cleaning up our least successful exercises at home. We are still possibly doomed if faced with my personal nemesis, sign #24: HALT – 90 Degree Pivot Left – HALT. We are entered in two trials on Sunday only.
Here is the course map, using APDT signs (click for a larger view). One of these days I will learn to draw nicer course maps. Today is not that day.
Once again, you can follow along with us:
Start: Again, I would like to get better attention from Freya whether it is required or not. If she starts out too distracted, it doesn’t get better until almost halfway into the run.
1. 19-Slow Pace.
2. 21-Normal Pace. Better than last week, she didn’t try to sit during the slow pace. I think I still need to show more of a change between the different paces.
3. 10-About “U” Turn. Ugh, miscue on my part. Should have been “back” not “fuss.”
4. 5-HALT – Sit – Walk Around. Freya seems to have lost her automatic sit somewhere along the line. Strange, because she hasn’t been in a conformation ring in literally years. Errors here are mostly mine, though. On the walk around, I’m holding the leash way too low, so I gave her an accidental correction when taking off again. Not to mention there would have points off for a tight leash, too.
5. 16- Call Front – Forward Left. Here, too, I’m holding the leash too low, again giving an accidental correction on the call front, with the leash too tight until the finish was completed.
6. 11-270-Degree Right.
7. 8-Left Turn. Sloppy turns.
8. 29-Straight Figure 8. I need to pay more attention on the walkthroughs, especially for spots like this where the path between signs is slightly offset for space reasons. Need to work on our pace through the cones. On the bright side, Freya totally ignored the barking from the gallery.
9. 9-About Turn – Right. Slightly sloppy.
10. 20-Fast Pace.
11. 21-Normal Pace. Again, need to work on finding the right pace for us. She almost got away on the fast!
12. 23-HALT – 90 Degree Pivot Right – HALT. Better than last week, only one try needed and she did actually move with me.
13. 7-Right Turn. Sloppy turn.
14. 26-Spiral Left – Dog Inside. Not too bad.
Bonus: Halt, Leave Dog, Call To Heel. That went better than I expected, except for where I almost whacked her in the face when she came to heel!
I still have much more of an issue with holding the leash too tight than I realized. Good thing to have video like this to bring that point home.
Is anyone besides me interested in seeing class notes every week? I can see where it might get boring to anyone who isn’t 1) me, 2) Freya, or 3) our instructor or classmates. And it probably isn’t that exciting to 3) after a while either!
(NaBloPoMo | January ’10: 18 of 31)
