The Video Taping

We did the video taping for the MDSA film festival a few weekends ago. It just wasn’t fated to go well. When we got to the Elk’s Lodge, the guy that was there didn’t know we were coming. And then it turned out that they’d had a wedding reception there the night before, but it hadn’t been cleaned up. So my good friends - who came to watch, not work – helped clean the place up. The guy who was working there didn’t even come help for more than a few minutes. We had to clear off and move tables, clean up the floor, and take down decorations. Poor Reyna followed me around for a while, and then I put a bowl of water for her, and she just stayed next to it. I had a feeling the distractions were going to be a bit much for her – after all, the place reeked of beer, there were chicken wings scattered around, and the remains of a roast in a tub on the bar. She also kept finding interesting tidbits on the floor.

Once we were ready to go, we tried it first without treats, doing the 1:30 version. I lost her attention so often, it was ridiculous. I always got her back, but it was easy to tell she was focused on everything but me. And the guy kept coming in and out of the little kitchen attached to the main room, snagging her attention every time he opened the door. So we tried it with treats, which meant we had to do the 2:30 version. It felt bad, but after watching it, I realized that even though she didn’t do everything I asked, and even though I forgot a couple of moves, there’s only three obvious times when I lost her. The biggest one was because I dropped a treat, and she found. The second time, we passed by the same spot, and she decided to double-check and make sure she hadn’t missed anything. The third time, she started to walk away from me, towards the kitchen, and I’m betting that’s when the guy decided to leave the room again. I gave it one more shot after that, but she was done. She did the opening “stick ‘em up” and then walked off the floor.

The funny thing was that I had more difficulty with the humans in the room than with the dog. There are parts on the video where, even though I specifically told everyone to be quiet, because there shouldn’t be talking on the tape, certain voices are very clear. Jeff got some spectacular pictures, though. And it was definitely a good learning experience for me. Of course, I was also glad to hear that several other people in the group had trouble getting their dogs to perform on video as well as they’d done in practice.

Our goal now is to really wean Reyna off of treats before the next film festival. I’m going to start listening to music again, and try and find another song I like, but I’m certainly not going to stress over working out a new routine for a while.