Our first ticket draw for obedience!

Well I got Tia & me got our first draw for Hatchford Brook champ on 2nd August - SCARRRRRYYYYYYY! We've been drawn 22nd out of 56 which is great - I can watch the first 10 or so (and get even more nervous) and then can get her ready when the next lot are working. I'm kinda dreading ticket draws. Running in top 10 is my nightmare as 1. I haven't woken up at that time of the morning, 2. Tia hasn't finished freaking out by then, and 3. I don't have time to watch the round and get it into my head where I have to turn. It'd be like running an agility course having 1min to walk it!

So what have I done with Tia this week?? Not enough really!... Hmm screwed up our sendaway a little bit more, done 2 brilliant scents, 1 of those a C scent which was perfect. Bit worried as tomorrow will be the first time she's done scent in the ring since we've been doing this new thing in training so I hope she doesn't freak out and just go and pick any one up. Her heelwork is going fab, and she's doing the length of a ticket round now, I just need to practise A LOT more fast pace, but I am lazy, and that is the worst pace! Normal pace is fine, I could do that all day, but fast is hard work, and slow feels too slow (but watching on vid it's bordering on too fast!) plus I try and rush the turns in slow, and sometimes I forget I'm meant to be doing slow, and it merges into normal!

Sendaways are the bain of my life... first it was heelwork, then scent, now it's sendaways! So I've been working on her doing great big long sendaways - fab. However I've been doing a lot of this with me running alongside her, as if she thinks its a race she takes off like her life depends on it. She gets to the mat at the back marker and stands nicely. However. If I send her and stand still, she touches the mat then swivels herself round in one swift action to face me. This would be fine, however it then leads on to her herding the mat, so by the time she's reached the mat she is facing me as she's completed her little circle (when she's herding sheep, its always me-->sheep--->Tia, so Tia is trying to do me-->mat---> Tia. Very frustrating! I've used 2 planks of wood to keep her in a straight line when she's approaching the back marker, once she realised she had to run between them, and not add them in as extra jumps! And then touch the front part of the matt with her paws, not the side, and she's not allowed to turn round. That's an awful lot for a dog with no brain to remember! We seem to have turned a corner now so I hope that she gets more confident now.

We have an obedience show this weekend, I am planning on competing tomorrow, and then training Sunday. Hopefully she won't be too bad and I will have a little bit of confidence for next week!

Pic taken of Rix at 9.5 years old

Sam took this pic of me and Rix 3 years ago - Rix looks so lovely when he's doing heelwork like he's supposed to!