Gambler and I have been doing UKC Rally Obedience for a while now, we have advanced to Rally Obedience 2. While we continue to go forward in UKC there was an upcoming AKC Rally Obedience trial so since it is winter and not much going on I along with my rally pals decided to enter some trials and try and get our titles in AKC.
The weekend of December 29-30, 2018 was the Cudahy Kennel Club trial. I entered both days in rally novice. I entered novice since we haven’t run any AKC rally trials. Novice was the last venue to run both days.
Since we were last to run it gave me plenty of time to memorize the course.
Gambler gave me a good luck kiss and we were off.
Our number was 402. Our run as you can see from the video below wasn’t very good. For what ever reason Gambler had his mind made up that there were too many good smells on the ground which made him not listen to me very well. In rally you can talk to your dog, you can pat your leg to get your dogs attention but you can’t touch your dog nor can you have a tight leash or correct the dog. During the run all I could think is that we are going to fail. You need a score of 70 or above out of 100 in order to qualify. You do have the possibility of NQ’ing as well.
We ended up qualifying with a score of 80/100. We didn’t receive any placements but we qualified. This was our first leg towards our AKC Rally Obedience Novice title.
December 30, was the second event for the weekend. We were in the novice class again and last to run.
We had the same judge as Saturday but a different course.
Gambler was so relaxed, I didn’t know if this was a good sign or not.
Of course we had our special custom arm band and number holder for the event.
Sunday’s run through was so much better than Saturdays. Gambler had his head in the game and didn’t smell very much. I felt much better about this run. We ended up with a score of 98/100.
We had a qualifying pass and took first place. I was totally surprised. I knew we had it in us but was doubting it after Saturdays run.
This would be our second AKC Rally Obedience pass. One more for our title. You need 3 qualifying passes to receive your title.
We had another Rally Obedience trial this past weekend. Stop back tomorrow to find out how it went.
Congratulations. Mom always wants to try this, but we aren’t good at loose leash walking, so we haven’t tried it yet.
WOW! There is nothing that the gang from SandSpring Chessies can’t do! Bentley’s nose would get us disqualified quickly in this sport. BOL!
Bravo! Congrats on qualifying. Well done.
Congrats G-man!!!!! Your are da BEST! I think it is sometimes a challenge to run with a stud, they probably feel like me in a parfume store ;o) we had a HOT girl at the last show and it was a disaster to see 3 dogs in a row with rattling teeth ;O(((
Wow, what a great job!!