First Trial Results

Today we had our very first trial. It was hosted by the Southern Maryland Dog Training Club and took place at the CTA facility in Beltsville, MD. We arrived at 8:30 am only to find out that the Novice A judging wouldn't start until sometime after noon. Lesson learned: "to follow" on a judging program means that it will never start sooner than 12:00 pm. We hung around for a while, chatting with another lady who trains with my club and fellow Novice A competitor who made the same mistake I did. Then I took Bailey and went to get some breakfast at McDonald's. We ate on the picnic benches outside. Petco was right across the street, so we stopped in there for a while too. Got back to the trial and still had a couple hours to wait.

Around 1:30 pm, the judging started. We were first in the ring. I was shaking like a leaf. On-lead heeling went ok, as did the figure 8. Bailey was rock solid in his stand for exam. The off-leash heeling went alright, with only a little lagging due to some turns in highly distracting locations. Good news is that Bailey realized he was lagging and caught up pretty quick. Recall was ok, but his front was a little off center. Stays were good too. We ended with a qualifying score of 192.5 and second place out of 14 dogs!

We went right from the ribbon "ceremony" for Novice A to the Rally-O Novice A walk-through. We were third into the ring for Rally. It was a pretty easy course and the judge seemed very friendly. Nothing major to report here. Bailey did everything great, except that we almost ran into a cone on the paperclip exercise. We ended with a qualifying score of 98 and second place out of 7 dogs!

The club was nice enough to provide small gifts for the dogs who placed, so we got two metal dishes embossed with paw prints, two bags of some lamb flavored treats, two red rosettes, and of course our green qualifying score ribbons. Here's a picture of Bailey with his spoils from the day:



The Hyattsville Rally-O trial was Saturday night too, but I'll write about that tomorrow when I cover our "second trial."