Openly Obedient

Dog shows of any type are so ridiculous. Somehow it seems even more unreal when you throw a bunch of events together. The obedience trial over the weekend was in conjunction with a big conformation show which also had lure coursing and barn hunt. Just a massive amount of crazy dog people all squished together. And it is all so ridiculous, yet people take it all so very seriously. I suppose you could say that about a lot of hobbies. But as I’m ‘in’ the dog show world, and have been for many years, sometimes it hits me stronger than others how very silly it all is. The amount of time and money we spend to play with our dogs is just crazy. And that’s on top of all the ‘stuff’ we think we need for the dogs, from the fancy food, fancy leashes, fancy toys, very gadgets galore. It’s basically a huge waste of money, but an entertaining one.

I do very much love dogs, and the relationship with your dog in a performance aspect is very different than ‘just a pet’, and I love it – and I think dogs love having that ability to communicate with us on that level too. Well, assuming they get a say in it. I think a lot of obedience dogs don’t get much of a say it in all. It’s a culture of ‘you MUST do it’, which doesn’t work for most people and doesn’t work well for most dogs either. Some will, but it’s human, and I think dog, nature to resent anything they’re MADE to do as opposed as chose to do.

Obedience is an interesting sport, as you take away much of the communication, verbal and non-verbal. So to me the challenge is that concept of training your dog to respond in that sterile environment, and for a fairly long period of time. And the hard part is, the slower your dog goes, the longer the run takes. Thankfully Navarre is pretty fast, so our open runs are about 5-6 minutes. So that’s 8 exercises in 5 minutes with no rewards and minimal physical and verbal praise inbetween exercises. It’s a lot of pressure and especially if you don’t regularly practice, it’s a lot to ask.

So Navarre gets big points for being mature enough to handle the obedience environment with really very little preparation – and certainly almost no prep on the sheer length of time he would need to work with very little feedback. We certainly weren’t perfect, but Navarre continues to work through it all. Very proud of my big goober, love the dog he’s grown up to be.

We were SO CLOSE to getting that CDX this weekend. I find the exercise he missed on Sunday to be really silly, the signal discrimination where I’m closest to him and use both a signal AND verbal to lie down … and he sits. The herding dog! So that’s a new one, go figure. Still, after a bit of disappointment that we screwed up something he knows so well, it was actually a good thing, I think. I handled the rest of the run like I should handle all the time, like my dog actually knows the exercises and I expect him to be able to do them. Shockingly, this works much better than trying to be ‘careful’.

We had our share of goofiness throughout the weekend, the biggest being that silly unprompted stand that he’ll do right before starting an exercise. He did that I don’t know how many times the first two days. And I kept trying to be ‘more careful’ to stop it from happening, which never works. After we messed up on Sunday I was all brazenly TRYING to get him to do it so I could fix it in the ring – and, of course, he was perfect.

Our heeling was never great, it wasn’t terrible, but also wasn’t as good as we can do (which, admittedly, is not super good anyway). There was bumping on his left turns and a bit of lagging on his about turns. His slow and fast were good though, and no problem with his halts. He was fairly focused though, even if he was sloppy. Signal exercise was not a problem until Sunday, of course. Broad jump was good, never got confused with the retrieves, which is one I thought he might struggle with. Finishes were about what we do at home, which is too far forward on the flip finish and too far back on the around. Fronts were fairly straight though. Drop on recall was good if not very fast, I tried both a signal and a verbal, it’s not the fastest down, but consistent. Our biggest issue was heeling and that stupid stand right when I indicate to the judge we’re ready. Well, that and getting our leash. You’d think I’d read the rules, but no. I figured it was the same as Novice, but with a stand-stay. But in Open you have to come back into the ring and wait for the judge to tell you to return. Whoops.

Anyway, Navarre had fun, I think, helped along to have some special ‘non-puppy’ time with just him. I think the whole obedience competition is a bit of mystery to him, but he was trying really hard. Well, other than his weird fascination with sniffing the judge on Sunday, no idea what that was about. He’s much more relaxing to work with, as I’m not trying to constantly calm him down or keep him from barking.

We’ll finish that CDX, and I’d like to try for the UD, I think. He can do it, and he seems to be enjoying himself. It’s no agility or herding, but he likes the personal attention. We have a couple options for this summer that I think I’ll look into.