Judging

I judged at Dig It’s club competition this Friday, my first “judging appointment”! It was actually a lot of fun, but also exhausting, and it was only a 2hr stint. Judges, I have a new found appreciation for your skills.

This was my course, just in case anyone is interested. It was supposed to be a fast and flowing 1-3 Jumping, and it seemed to run reasonably well! Lots of 5F rather than Es, and feedback was good. It was really great to see a lot of baby dogs doing so well!

Because it was a fun club competition, once we were done, I was able to get Rio out for a bit of a play on the course. I went back to a toy rather than treats due to the location, and I had absolutely no goals other than to get Rio engaged and focused. Mission accomplished? Rio was super focused, jumping brilliantly, crazy for her toy, and raring to go. I’ll admit I cannot figure out what I did differently, and cannot take any credit for her awesome attitude. I didn’t ask her to weave, but she ran the rest of the course perfectly.

Which is making me think … I’ve been very focused on doing a lot of drive forward work with her, and actually her drive forward is great. I always say she’s independent and impatient, and I think this is the “problem”. She wants to GO, she wants me to stop slowing her down for turns etc, so we need to go back and do some more rewards for responding to handling. She also doesn’t like waiting, ie. queueing (waits as a task are fine).