Fun match

Lucy and Jasmine took a road trip to Guides Canins on this bright sunny day to participate in a rally-o fun match. We ran two different novice courses.

In the first course, I totally didn't have Lucy's attention for the first twenty or so seconds; it was reminiscent of the la-la land we started visiting all too often at agility trials. She was forging ahead, sniffing, and looking around, not tuned in and definitely not in rally mode. Interestingly enough, the moment I pulled a treat out of my pocket (half way through the figure 8), she magically snapped back into begging focus mode! Once we got our connection back, the rest was much better, and the problem didn't repeat in our second run. Certainly more work is needed with distractions: There were a few attention lapses including one at a corner where a dog was barking and bouncing on the other side of a door. Still, it was a lot of fun and Lucy did great!

Here's our first run:


And our second run:


Lessons learned / things to work on:

• Use her name in the first few seconds to keep focus
  
• Get a slightly shorter leash that's just the right length so it doesn't need all kinds of looping but at the same time isn't too short
  
• In the interest of avoiding an annoying five faults, don't crowd her around the cones
  
• Practice in distracting, unfamiliar environments (a few field trips are on Lucy's calendar for this)
  
• Her left 270s/360s are coming along but I'd like to get the circle smaller with her maintaining a stronger heel position.
  
• I could/should spend some time to get her to trot instead of pace, but oh well.
  
• Good job, Lucy!