- Location
- East Sussex
I've been at Cheltenham for a weekend Rally competition with Tess. It was at a new venue which was much less attractive than last year's - a noisy building site on one side (which even worked on Sunday) and smells from a landfill site on the other. On Sunday another drawback was that our ring adjoined another with just tape on the ground to separate them.
OK so you'll have gathered from all the excuses that we didn't excel! On Saturday I retired part way round L3 but we managed a qualifying score of 181 at L4. The good points were that Tess sailed over the jump (the jump is introduced at L4) and did a perfectly straight walk backwards for the bonus.
On Sunday we didn't qualify at L4 (171 - the qualifying mark is 175) but managed 181 at L3. Again a great bonus of down at a distance.
I was actually congratulated by a couple of people for my scores (Rally people are lovely) but I was disappointed in our rounds - not in the scores, if anything the judges were generous.
The problem we had was that on entering the ring Tess wasn't at all engaged or focused - a lot of nose down sniffing and even looking once or twice as though she was going to run off (L3 and higher are off lead - thankfully she didn't). I'm struggling to understand why. Normally I would put this down to a stress response but Tess wasn't behaving like this at all outside the ring. The dogs have to remain on lead unless working in the ring, but I took her around the ground on a 6ft lead to allow her to sniff and acclimate, but she quickly started to give 'I want to work' signals - jumping into heel position and looking up at me. Whenever Rajah has been distracted / stressed in the ring he has shown these signs in the grounds too but Tess had looked absolutely fine until entering the ring when she immediately disengaged.
It's not to do with not having treats/toys on me as for some time now I have been training with leaving the rewards in a bag on the ground and returning to them to get something after the work - and I put the same bag on the ground outside the ring.
I have previously watched quite a lot of content from Petra Ford (who works Labs) from Fenzi and she talks about the need to practise exactly what will happen when you enter the ring. The only thing I haven't practised is the harness to lead transition. When I collect Tess for training she is wearing a harness as she needs to be fastened to the seat belt in my car. Tess doesn't mind the harness once it's on (it fits well and is soft) but hates having it put on, so when we arrive at the park or Downs etc I leave the harness on and just work off lead. In Rally competitions harnesses aren't allowed - dogs have to wear a flat collar and they must enter and exit the ring on lead. So at shows I remove the harness before we enter and clip on a lead to the collar, then when we're in the ring I remove the lead. And I haven't practised this routine. The other thing I don't do in practice is to set out a course with signs because it takes so long - but I suppose that also makes it look different. Perhaps I should enter Rallyonline again like I used to - I only stopped because my OH had got a fed up with videoing. Lots for me to mull over.
No photos of Tess but I came across this video of Molly from a few years ago - isn't she a love!
OK so you'll have gathered from all the excuses that we didn't excel! On Saturday I retired part way round L3 but we managed a qualifying score of 181 at L4. The good points were that Tess sailed over the jump (the jump is introduced at L4) and did a perfectly straight walk backwards for the bonus.
On Sunday we didn't qualify at L4 (171 - the qualifying mark is 175) but managed 181 at L3. Again a great bonus of down at a distance.
I was actually congratulated by a couple of people for my scores (Rally people are lovely) but I was disappointed in our rounds - not in the scores, if anything the judges were generous.
The problem we had was that on entering the ring Tess wasn't at all engaged or focused - a lot of nose down sniffing and even looking once or twice as though she was going to run off (L3 and higher are off lead - thankfully she didn't). I'm struggling to understand why. Normally I would put this down to a stress response but Tess wasn't behaving like this at all outside the ring. The dogs have to remain on lead unless working in the ring, but I took her around the ground on a 6ft lead to allow her to sniff and acclimate, but she quickly started to give 'I want to work' signals - jumping into heel position and looking up at me. Whenever Rajah has been distracted / stressed in the ring he has shown these signs in the grounds too but Tess had looked absolutely fine until entering the ring when she immediately disengaged.
It's not to do with not having treats/toys on me as for some time now I have been training with leaving the rewards in a bag on the ground and returning to them to get something after the work - and I put the same bag on the ground outside the ring.
I have previously watched quite a lot of content from Petra Ford (who works Labs) from Fenzi and she talks about the need to practise exactly what will happen when you enter the ring. The only thing I haven't practised is the harness to lead transition. When I collect Tess for training she is wearing a harness as she needs to be fastened to the seat belt in my car. Tess doesn't mind the harness once it's on (it fits well and is soft) but hates having it put on, so when we arrive at the park or Downs etc I leave the harness on and just work off lead. In Rally competitions harnesses aren't allowed - dogs have to wear a flat collar and they must enter and exit the ring on lead. So at shows I remove the harness before we enter and clip on a lead to the collar, then when we're in the ring I remove the lead. And I haven't practised this routine. The other thing I don't do in practice is to set out a course with signs because it takes so long - but I suppose that also makes it look different. Perhaps I should enter Rallyonline again like I used to - I only stopped because my OH had got a fed up with videoing. Lots for me to mull over.
No photos of Tess but I came across this video of Molly from a few years ago - isn't she a love!
