my EXCELLENT boy!

... Kaleb is so tired tonight, and is snoring so loud I can hear him from across the room :)

This weekend I had K-man entered in our local Dog show. We were entered over 3 days and did 1 Rally Excellent each day. We also entered 2 runs of Open (one Saturday, one Sunday). Kaleb came home with his second CDX leg, YAY!! And scored 100, 99 & 96 in his Rally runs ... earning him his Rally Excellent Title!

Friday K rocked, we just had Rally - and he scored a perfect 100 with a High in Class. A pretty good way to start the weekend.

He did his back up perfectly. I mean really great! Both days! It was 2 weeks since our last show where he got 10 points off for it. And well, you know me. I had to fix it, and I had to do it FAST! So everyday since then, we practiced about 5 times a day. Back to square one, retrained it completely. And well, it payed off.

... you can teach an old dog new tricks, afterall ...

His other two runs were awesome too. His 99 happened because his foot ticked the jump! Funny I thought :) His other run, I said "ready" then OK ... and he shot across the room like he was retrieving a bird, and stood over the food containers in the figure eight, and just looked at me :) so we got 4 points off because we have to redo the first exercise ... that he bolted past. How can you not love him, seriously.

Again, I am so proud of his efforts in Open - he earned his 2nd leg. Totally foreign territory for me, NOT at all my comfort zone, but Like everything, I had to make myself do it, or I would regret it. I honestly never thought we'd ever get into the ring. I've conquered my fear, and we are having fun. We've never had the chance to be in an Obedience club, and have never taken formal classes for it, so I've learned alot along the way from watching and friends who have pointers too. We could use a bit more polish and a spit shine on some of the formal parts of it, but dammit we can get in there and do the work like the rest of them. Yesterday he was 1 of 4 to qualify of 9 dogs entered. It was very exciting.

Today his run was not too bad, he balked at the broad jump and I had to tell him again to take it so we got a big fat 0 and on his down stay he had a scratch and ended up sitting, but never moved. Oh well!! We got through another day!

And the most exciting part of it all ... NO BARKING in his stays, either days. WOW that work payed off too. It took me the last 3 months of training at home, putting him in stressful places in the house (the bathroom the most stressful) to eliminate the barking. It's hard to mimic stress in places dogs are OK in, but I figured it out for us. I used to only be able to go 30 seconds until a bark. I would just reward him before I knew he was going to bark .... and he gets it. He really gets it. Even if he only barks once or twice I don't care, just not 10 times in 3 minutes please.

I have a totally different perspective with Kaleb these days. I trust him, he trusts me. I truly love him and love working with him. Something that has helped eliminate 75% of the stress when I go in the ring. The fact that he is here at all. Anything I do with him is just icing on the cake, and having fun and getting a Q is just more icing. I really like icing.