save the pit bull, save the world.

We started our new session of classes this week. Luce is taking Rally 2 and then a special 4-week Rally 3 class being offered as a prep for our club’s trial in mid-November.

Neither class is particularly exciting- it’s all just practice running courses of various levels. The Rally 3 class offers three rings of rally goodness- one Novice course, one Advanced, and one Excellent. 12 dogs divided into three groups. Everybody runs every course at least once. There’s a lot of sitting around and waiting your turn, but it’s good practice for Luce to get into the ring, get set up, and GO. That’s our biggest weakness in all of it- turning her brain on at the start line.

We have five trials coming up in November and I’m tremendously nervous. We’re starting APDT with two trials on the 6th and 2 on the 28th. And fingers crossed and double-crossed, we will hopefully finish her AKC RA title at our club show on the 15th.

Steve is taking Agility Foundations for the third freaking time. This session, that is the only class in the building at the time, so it’s not nearly as distracting for him. He is better able to think and work. The other dogs provide an acceptable level of distraction that makes it relatively easy to keep him under threshold but still enough to work on the issue with the “Look at That” game.

I was thrilled to see that his contacts held up over the session break. We worked a little bit on them at home using just a board with one end propped up on some books, but not a ton. In class, he was 100% solid, whether I sent him, ran with him, or ran past him. I almost cried with pride. Good puppy!

He’s also taking Novice competition obedience, which he’s not strictly 100% ready for, but the class is pretty relaxed and very small (just one other dog this session) so we are able to work on what we need to work on. For Stevie, that’s primarily attention and straightness. Dog cannot sit or run straight. True fact. It makes me nuts.

Anyway, I was floored by his beautiful Figure 8 today. We played around with it a tiny bit at home, but nothing particularly formal. He got a bit distracted in the middle the first time (dogs! running! in the next ring!) but he was so responsive to my shoulder cues and my foot cues and so happy heads-up prancy puppy. Nothing like when I started Luce in the Figure 8!

I was also thrilled that he held his 1 minute sit and down stays. I stayed close (at the end of his six foot lead) and talked to him the whole time, stepping in to reinforce him when something particularly exciting happened elsewhere in the building, but he was solid and did not waver. The training building is a crazy, loud place on a Saturday morning with three classes running, plus people coming and going. Very stimulating and exciting and very challenging for a puppy brain.

I think we’ll get a lot out of this class, though I suspect I bewildered the trainer with the “Look at That” game. Yes, I was clicking my dog for looking away from me. But! He started self-interrupting and whipping his head back to me pretty quickly, so it works! It’s good for teachers to learn too.

Bottom line?

I have good dogs.