Canine Freestyle Seminar

This past weekend, Reyna and I attended a canine freestyle seminar in Hampton, VA. Duncan and Natalie both went with us. I had asked Natalie to join us when I first planned it, thinking the company would be nice, and that a second set of hands would make things easier if I decided to take Duncan. Because of my back, having Natalie along proved to be invaluable. She was a huge help, with loading and unloading the truck and dog crates, exercising Duncan, and video taping the instructional and demo portions of the seminar.

The dogs were both very well-behaved, and Duncan learned how to climb up on the bed all by himself (he’s taken that to the next level, and will now climb up on the couch without assistance). I don’t think Natalie much appreciated cold wet snouts in her face at 6:00 AM, but that’s part of the fun of big inside dogs. The only behavioral issues were Reyna occasionally barking when she saw dogs doing stuff and she was stuck in her crate, and Duncan’s incessant whining every time Reyna and I were working. A fair chunk of the video has the background noise of him whining and crying. The boy has some serious separation anxiety to work through. Reyna did have one outburst that I remember while we were working, and she and a male Dalmatian just did not get along. But other than that, I was very proud of her behavior.

The seminar was a nice refresher on some things, and really made me feel like Reyna and I have come a long way in just a couple of months. We had to choreograph two short routines – one was a minute, the other 30 seconds. At the first seminar we went to, we had to do the same thing, and we did relatively well, considering all we really knew was sit, down, stay, come, and spin. This time, though, I was proud of both of us. We did several variations of turns and spins, but we ended the first routine with me straddling Reyna and both of us backing up. Got lots of applause for that, and even Carolyn Scott said she hadn’t been expecting something like that. For the short routine, our big move was Reyna’s “stick ‘em up” trick, and that got a really nice reaction, too. We also did some music matching, with “I’m from the Country” being the crowd favorite, followed by “Brown-Eyed Girl” and “Man, I Feel Like a Woman.”

One obnoxious thing that occurred was a lady who said she’d worked at a GSD show kennel for years started insisting that I needed to be showing Duncan. She just kept oohing and ahhing over him. Which is fine, but as soon as she realized Reyna doesn’t have papers, she totally ignored her. All she was interested in was Duncan. She wouldn’t stop insisting I show him until I pointed out that he’d been neutered. She seemed to have no real concept of having a GSD as a pet.

But ignoring the crazy pushy lady, several women complimented Reyna – both her looks and her skills – and one woman was genuinely interested in learning more about GSDs, specifically about why some have sloped backs and others don’t. I even got a couple of compliments for my handling skills.

I’ll be keeping an eye on the seminar schedule, but I don’t think I’ll be putting my back through that again until its much better. I had a blast, but I am now paying for the fun I had last weekend, and I can only imagine how much worse it would have been if Natalie had not come along.