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!