Rally Fun Match!

Cooper and I participated in a Rally Fun Match on Tuesday. We had a great time! It was held outdoors, which isn't very common in this part of the states. I thought this would be a great opportunity to see how he would perform in an outdoor competition. We were entered in Advanced Rally. He did awesome! I couldn't believe how undistracted he was out there. Here is the kicker...we get to our last sign and he wanders way out to the side of me and sniffs around a bit...I call him back and he comes over and does the sit part of the exercise...then I hear the judge go "ohhh nooo"...there he was siting just and inch or two off the ground POOPING! Right in the ring! So we were disqualified:(
I guess I should have tried harder to potty him before. I'm usually not that concerned because we are normally in doors and he would never had done that if we were indoors. Lesson learned! At least it happened at a fun match and not at a real trial.
I asked the judge for our score sheet and she went over it with me. She said we did great! We would have had a 94! I know that if he wouldn't have pooped, we would have done that last sign without a problem. It was a sit-stand-walk around dog, and he is solid at that one.
So now I am left wondering if he did so well due to the extra training we have been doing, or if he was less stressed and distracted out doors? It was crazy good, he didn't hesitate or wander or sniff at all, he was just right there doing his thing the whole time. Now I wish we had an outdoor show to enter :)

Cooper turns 2!

Happy 2nd Birthday Cooper!

Cooper qualified in Rally Advanced!

This time we did much better in our Rally Avanced trial. We didnt get a high score, but we did qualify! Woohoo! I was very inpressed with how we did considering all we had going against us. The trail was held at the fairgrounds in Waterloo IA. It was in a big non heated or air conditioned metal building. Good thing it was cool that day :) We started off with a thunderstorm and heavy rain right away in the morning. Good thing Cooper is not afraid of thunder! I did have a heck of a time getting him to go potty in the rain though..lol. The building was very busy with 4 conformation rings, an obedience ring, and the rally ring all together in one open space. The grooming area was also right across from the Rally ring. The building was very noisy. Cooper was pretty distracted once we got in the ring, but he stayed with me and responded to my commands. He did kinda wander from me a few times, but I was able to get him back to heel position. The most difficult station for us was the 90 degree left pivot. Because he was so distracted he ended up too far in front of me on his sit to be able to pivot correctly. We tried 2x and the same thing happeded where he would end up turning around and facing me. I know we lost 10 points right there for not completeing the station properly. Its a bummer because he does this so well in training. He often does the backwards jump to get himself into place and its so fun to watch. Other than that I am guessing we lost points for hesitation and not heeling all the time. I would have liked a higher score, but all things considered I am happy that we did as well as we did. We ended up with a score of 82. Cooper's brother Falkor was there too and did awesome by scoring a 94! This was his first try at advanced. It was so fun to watch him perform and see how he stays so connected with his mom (Jen). I think Cooper and I need to go way back to the beginning of our training and work in some attention exercises :).

Rally Setback

So last time I posted it was about our upcoming debut in Advanced Rally. I know I am a bit late posting the update on how it went, but I have been dragging my feet on it because it is definitely not something to brag about. Our training in preparation for being off leash in a Rally course had gone so well. I wasn't super confident, but I had high hopes.
We entered the ring and handed our leash off. The very first sign was figure 8 with toys and treats as a distraction. Cooper has a very good "leave it" so I wasn't worried about the distraction. For some reason he gets excited when we do weaves,serpentines,and figure 8's around cones. He had been lagging a bit off leash during our training, so I had planned on extra encouragement to keep him up beside me. Well, I think it was the combination of the figure 8 and all the clapping I did and he went nuts after we went around our first cone. He was all excited and thought it was time to play and do zoomies. I was able to settle him down enough to redo the station. This time I didn't encourage him as much and we made it through. The next station I made a mistake on because I was so flustered from trying to settle him down. When I went to redo it I got him really confused and he was just lost. We ended up not finishing that station and just went on to the next one. The next station went well...but he was still very excited and not very in tune with me. I ended up completely losing his attention on the next station as he decided to wander over to the edge of the ring and check out what was going on next to us. I ended up excusing us from the ring because I was really frustrated and the harder I tried the worse it got.

I decided that it all went wrong from the beginning when I over encouraged him by clapping and got him too psyched up. He gets very excited when I clap, but seems fine if I just pat my leg. I guess we were just not ready for off leash yet.

We are entered both days in advanced Rally in a show the end of April in Waterloo IA. I took a small break from all the training, and this week we are getting back into the swing to get ready for Waterloo.
I hope that our next Advanced Rally trial goes much better.

Advanced Rally debut

Cooper and I have our first Advanced Rally trial this Saturday. We have been practicing hard on our off leash work. He does seem a bit stressed off leash, but I am hoping that he can get past that while we are in the ring. Wish us luck!

Itty Bitty Baby Cooper

I came across these pictures of Cooper from before I ever even met him. I didn't have them when I originally started this blog so I thought with his 2nd birthday coming up I would share them now. So cute!

Cooper with his new title ribbon

Cooper got his RN!

I am a little late posting this, but 2 weeks ago Cooper earned his RN! We needed one last qualifying leg, so I entered both days (sat and sun) just in case we did really bad Sat, then I would have Sun to get it. Saturday went really well. Much better than the trials we were in at the Land O Lakes show. I didn't feel like I was dragging him around the ring this time. He connected with me much better and was eager to perform. It almost felt too easy :) We walked away with a score of 96 and 4th place. Cooper was beat out by his Dad(Ryu) who also received his RN at the same time! We had a lot of fun!
So then I was left with what to do on Sunday. Since I had paid for the entry, I thought I may as well compete. I had 2 options; I could change my entry to Rally Advanced, or just compete for fun in Rally Novice again. I though about it overnight and had finally decided we would just fly right into Advanced. I was really nervous about this since we have not really practiced off leash anywhere but at home. Unfortunately, we did not get to the show in time to change our entry, so we were stuck doing Novice.
Boy was I glad we titled on Sat. The judge on Sunday set up an impossible course. He totally tricked almost all of us. He set the course up in only half the ring, so it was really cramped and there was a lot going on in such a small area. There was a weave twice and when coming out of the weave, you naturally went to the right. But here is where the trick was. Straight ahead from the weave there was a 270 turn. It was back to back with another sign and unfortunately we almost all missed it during our walk through. So we missed a sign and got DQ'd. So did 4 other people. Out of 7 of us only 3 qualified! What a bummer! It was fun anyhow and I learned a valuable lesson not matter how comfortable or confident I am with the course, I need to watch the sign numbers as I walk the course.
I looked at what our score would have been if we wouldn't have missed that sign, and we had a 97! I talked to other people that do Rally, one of them being a judge, and they said that this judge is known for having difficult courses and many of them do not enter if he is the judge.
We are now working on our Rally Advanced. I think we are going to do our first Advanced trial at a small obedience show that is the second weekend in March. The judge that DQ'd us a couple of weeks ago is the Sunday judge at this show. How fun would it be to perform for him again and do well!
I will post pictures soon of Cooper on his big day :)

A Sleep Over

Cooper gets to spend a few days with his brother Poet while we dog sit.

As you can imagine it has been non-stop play! They dont even stop to eat!

They did spend some quiet time chewing their bones....

Coop has ribbons!

Cooper's qualifying score and 4th place ribbons from the Rally trials Jan 9th & 10th.

A weekend FULL of Rally :)

We made it through our first show and competition experience! We competed in Rally Novice A both days at the Land O Lakes Dog Show. Here is how it went:
Saturday: Our first time competing in Rally! I was really nervous not knowing what to expect. Cooper did well but I was the one that made the mistakes. I had two re-dos because I rushed a bit too much. I ended up doing a redo on a call to forward finish left and a 360 left turn. On both of these I didn't give myself enough room to complete the task. Those redo's cost me 6 points. I had a couple of tight leash marks and a mark for not getting to a fast pace and then to a normal in time (but come on they hardly give enough room to do this with a giant breed dog) and Coop had a slow to respond on the Down and and out of position since he laid sideways. We ended up with a qualifying score of 83 and took 4th place. I was proud but wanted to try for a higher score on Sunday.
Sunday: I had high hopes for us today. Since I was more relaxed and Cooper did so well the day before, I thought that with out my mistakes we would get a higher score. WRONG! This judge was much more picky. But Cooper was also very distracted. Watching the video that a friend took of us, I think that it looks like I am almost dragging him through the course. He was so busy looking around at everything but me that he was all over the place. We had great difficulty with our left turns since he was not paying attention I had a hard time moving because I was knocking into him. After watching the video I can see points where he seemed a bit worried about the judge following us around the course, something that he didn't do the day before. I was really bummed! In the end we ended up with the same score 83 and 4th place again. We had a lot of marks for Cooper crowding me on the turns one tight leash and a bad hesitation on the Down.
We at least walked away with two qualifying scores. We are entering in another trail at the end of the month and hope to get our RN! I am hoping for a score in the 90's this time :)

Rally Update

Last night in preparation for our upcoming Rally trials, we attended a drop in Rally class. After seeing all of the signs that looked like a foreign language to me, I became a little nervous for myself. We watched 4 other people with varying experience move through the course before we attempted it ourselves. I moved through it slowly and still got lost! There sure wasn't much room to perform some of those tasks with a Dane. We attempted it a second time and I felt much more comfortable and Cooper performed a bit better. So here are the problems that I can foresee us having:
1. Cooper was very nervous there when we first went in because it was a new busy building that he had never been to. We are going to go to the show extra early so that he has time to settle in and become bored with the whole place.
2. I am so used to correcting him with the chain collar that I have to be very aware of that during the trials. I have to remember to encourage him by patting my leg and getting him excited about following me. This is hard for me since after all the obedience we have done those exact things are discouraged! I just need to remember to take my time and be patient with him to allow him to follow my commands on his own without a harsh correction.
I am hoping that it is at least a good experience and a fun time if nothing else. There are only 7 dogs entered Saturday and 6 on Sunday. 4 of those both days are us and 3 other Danes whom we know!