With all the dog events that Clancy and I have been involved in lately, I have a long list of ideas for future blog posts!
Within the last 30 days, Clancy completed his AKC Rally Novice title in style by winning 1st place with 94 points and in his following trial the next day, scored even higher with 98 points and took 1st place again. (I had entered him into two Rally Novice A trials over the weekend though we only needed one more leg for our RN title just in case something went wrong on the Saturday.)
Then on this past Sunday, Clancy and I were in our first AKC Obedience trial. Not being able to encourage Clancy through the course in the ring was a challenge (which you are able to do in Rally Obedience). He didn’t happily oblige to heeling in the Obedience ring as he does in Rally and Clancy also decided to be a funny guy on the recall by almost running by me to say hi to the people and dogs behind me. (Fortunately, he corrected himself and promptly returned in front of me in a partly sideways sit, as if he started to get back in heel position and then suddenly remembered he was supposed to be in front of me.) We still did better than the other dogs in Novice A and earned 1st place with 181 points and more importantly, obtained our first leg of our Companion Dog title. 🙂
Though Clancy’s keeshond sense of humor did come out during our first Obedience Novice trial, we still got our 1st leg of our CD and 1st place!
Over the past month, Clancy also achieved brightening up the day of dozens and dozens of elderly residents in nursing homes through our Pets On Wheels visits. He received rounds of applause from his trick shows he performed for them and lots of love and compliments. Most importantly, Clancy did get some patients suffering from dementia to break temporarily from their spell to pet Clancy.
This weekend Clancy and I are entered in another UKC Altered Conformation show and we are entered in three Rally Obedience level 2 trials. I’m hoping to accomplish his UKC R02 title all in one weekend. Graduating to all off-leash with the off-set figure 8 challenge (where we have to do a figure 8 circling bowls of treats and/or toys) is going to be a huge challenge for Clancy!
Next week things finally slow down, so I hope to write a detailed blog post on how fun and challenging Rally Obedience is! Til then, please share what you’ve been up with your furry best friend!?
Kees of Dog's Delight 