Sunday, May 10, 2009

Gryffin finishes his UDX at long last!

(This is a combination of a couple of emails I wrote on Saturday May 2)

I'm sitting at the Tri-Cities trial, happy as a clam... Gryffin
(finally!) finished his UDX today, and for icing on the cake, also
scored well enough to finish his OM1 (the new Obedience Master title).
He scored a 195 in Utility, and 198 for 4th place in Open B. After
going 0 for 6 trying for #10, and going down on his sit stay in his
last 3 trials, I was really thrilled when I came back after the sit
stay and he was sitting. In fact, all 22 dogs in Open B and A passed
their stays today. Not sure I've ever seen that happen.

Later that day...

We ended up 5 for 5 today - Gryffin q'ed in all 4 classes (AM OB -
198, 4th place; UB - 195; PM OB 196.5, UB 194) and Ty (finally) earned
her first CDX leg with a 192.5. She had a no-finish on the BJ, which
was first. She started to go around me, but then stopped and sat at a
45 degree angle. Probably a by-product of working on brace this past
week. The rest of her class was sloppy but passing. Given the state
of her stays (weak at best), I am completely thrilled that she did
both of them. And very proud of my boy for his 4 passes today. We had
OB II this afternoon, which meant down stay first. He was pretty tired
by then, but the promise of his beloved rubber ball before the sit
stay lit up his eyes and he held it, hurray!

I have to credit today's stay success to rereading Linda Koutsky's
article on stays when I was in Lakeland 2 weeks ago. When I got home,
I started doing frequent around the house random sit stays (with the
occasional down stay for confused Ty) and caught both making a LOT of
errors. I'm sure going to keep this up!

Adele and Ch Grousemoor Gryffindor *UDX OM1* RE SH WCX (and 82 OTCh points and all needed 1st places)

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