Scandal's first UKA show

Mixed weekend with Scandal - i took her to Wye Valley on Saturday and felt like we made massive progress, she was much calmer round the rings, sitting quietly, no lunging and only a bit of barking... almost civilised.

Then at Thatcham, omg, what a pain. I forgot her headcollar so we kicked off to a real bad start with me resorting to muzzling her as it calms her down very slightly and means she can't bark quite as loudly. All the good work from Saturday was immediately undone, if I have her out long enough she calms down a little bit, still bounces around but no lunging, but then she didn't calm down at all on Sunday I think due to having no headcollar, which evidently has more positives than I thought it did.

Here's the video of parts of her runs, editing out the toy playing, and a bit of stuff we did at Dave's on tues, more about that in another post.


Her first run was beginners steeplechase... 1-8 she did brilliantly, then on a turn I said 'left' and she did, so I said good girl (=toy)... and so she ran past the next jump :) so we did the turn again, which she did nicely. Then she got totally confused on the last bit, it was a sort of arc shape, which most of the baby dogs just couldn't do... infact I think the only ones who managed it were the ones who ran the 'long' way round, but with Scandal I wanted to cross behind - however have taught her cross-behind = sharp turn, and she just couldn't understand what I wanted and kept pinging off to pick a jump up (a mile better than when she was clingy) so I got on the inside of the arc and made it easier, in hindsight I should have done that at the beginning and not seen how she got on.

In the agility, the start was jump-dogwalk and I'd decided we were going to do a running contact, she did a big leap down the down plank and just got the contact, ... so we did the down plank and she did it great, so we did the whole thing (expertly captured on camera... not ;)) and again she was great. Then we did aframe, jump tunnel and she was nice again. Apart from Garth pressed 'stop' on the camera as Scandal went up the aframe, and start just as she left. I was well moody after that, oops! And then did a simple jumping bit to finish, which I was chuffed with, she's trying soooooooooo hard.

Must must must work on my waits. Again in both rounds we had 'sit. wait. one paw forward. one paw back. one paw forward. both paws forward.' I get so excited that she is keen and wants to go but I have got to insist she sits properly else I think very soon we won't have waits at all. I will work on this over the next couple of months but then in training she has a very upright sit, doesn't lean over at all. Not like in the ring! I am really pleased however that she is very enthusiastic, which is completely opposite to what I thought she'd be like!