So we (Riley and I) ventured south this weekend to try out rally at the Hamilton club. Never been there before but the facility was nice and people seemed nice too. Left the little man at home cause he'd just be bored all day and I think Riley likes the alone time. Anyways, so this is the first time we've done rally since, oh let's say November. Bless their hearts, why do I make my dogs do these things? I put them in situations they aren't used to then expect them to focus? Geesh, what kind of dog owner am I? :)

Anyways, moving on. . .so Riley pulled off Double Q #6 for her RAE so I'm thrilled with that. Rally is not nearly as fun to her as agility. . .Susan says Riley thinks it's too slow for her, she likes to go fast, which I had kind of figured out myself but it's nice to have confirmation. The show always starts with excellent, which is usually our sticking point. I know part of the reason is that I'm more tense about Excellent so that goes directly to Riley and also another part is she's usually a little keyed up from the car ride, new facility, new smells, etc. Excellent started with all the signs we don't particularly care for. The moving down was the first one. That actually went pretty well and once she was down, she stayed down which is a huge improvement. Before she'd always pop up once I started moving to her left. The back up three steps, though she was practicing it well before we went in, she got pretty crooked on when in the actual ring. There was something about the back corners that she didn't like. . .at all. I could see her tense up about them when we got close. Apparently, she thinks there was some bad mojo going on back there. Didn't help that someone tried to open the back door right as we were walking by. And she had a great honor this time too. There was this novice golden retriever that kept trying to stir stuff up with other dogs so he went off during the honor. Riley's ears were flicking around like crazy but she stayed right where she was. I tried to use some of the advice from Lynn Reagan-Hull about creating a relaxed posture and it seems to help both me and her. Score wasn't spectacular but what should I expect since I haven't practiced with her. Deb of Deb's Dog Blog graciously offered to tape our runs. I'd never had the ability to review our runs before and it put some stuff in to prespective. It really didn't look as bad the second time as it felt the first time. Let's see if I can post the link here.

Advanced was a little better but still not as happy as I would have liked her to have been. I've figured out that she likes the sit pivot right sit sign but not the one to the left. It wasn't till yesterday that I figured out that I gave the wrong command for sit-pivot left. . .no wonder she didn't know what the heck I was talking about. We had a sit-stand-walk around that she nailed. She has always tracked me a little with her head when I go for the walk around but she stayed right there this time, which is huge to me. She took a moment to scratch (stress) before a swing. She actually moved fast for the fast sign in Advanced but not so much in Excellent. Here's the link to the video of this one. Let's see how our success hold up this weekend when we do a three day rally trial.

So my mom keeps my dogs during the day while I'm at work. She will stop by my house once I'm home to drop them off when she goes out to do the chores, and usually rings my door bell to let me know they are on the back porch. So last night, she did that except door bell didn't ring-maybe due to the cold. I just happened to hear the screen porch slam close on her way out. So I go out to investigate and yup, there's the little white dogs looking at me and doing their happy-to-see-you-dance. They get excited as they normally do and as I go to open the door, Riley starts screaming bloody murder. I mean, really screaming her head off. Ear breaking, heart wrenching, adrenaline pumping screams. I throw the door open and see she's got her foot stuck between the door frame and the flooring below it (the house is 90 years old and has settled so they don't match up totally). We are all totally freakin out cause I can't get her foot out. Eventually I figure out to push down on the flooring to make enough space to get her foot out. She hobbles around, holding her paw in the air and whimpers for minutes after that. I tell you, my heart was breaking and adrenaline was pumping! Oh my gosh! Still thinking about those horrible screams now. . .it was awful. She still hobbles around on it for a couple more minutes. I run and get her a baby aspirin in hopes that it will keep any swelling down and ease the soreness. She wouldn't let me touch it for a little while but she hates having her feet touched any ways so this didn't totally surprise me. After a half hour, all was forgotten and she decides to jump off the bed, about giving me another heart attack cause it's really high and onto hardwood floors. So all is right again in the world and I'm definitely gonna have to do something about that gap beneath the door, though I'd be surprised if that ever happened again cause she's gonna be super leary of it from now on.