Rally-O!

Duncan and I had a Rally trial in Winston-Salem this weekend. I was up at 4:00 both days, as we had to be there early. Duncan wasn't too happy about his early morning wake-up calls, but at least he got to nap on the drive. Lucky pup.

We were scheduled to run Novice courses both days, but I was hoping Duncan might qualify on Saturday and earn his Novice title. If that happened, I planned to bump us up to Advanced for Sunday. In anticipation, we'd been practicing Advanced exercises, especially the 90 degree left pivots, jumps, and any that required a lot of sits in a short time.

Duncan totally surpassed my expectations. Not only did he qualify on Saturday (third leg, so that gave us a title), but he qualified with a perfect score of 100! That definitely got him some extra puppy crack. We ended up taking second place for that trial, as there was another dog that also got a score of 100. For tie-breakers, they use the course time, and the other dog ran his course faster than we did, so he took first. But you know what? Thats perfectly fine, because Duncan still got a perfect score!

Here we are with the judge after awards were handed out.


Before we left Saturday, I made sure the show secretary put us in the Advanced group for Sunday. We stopped for lunch on the way home, and I got Duncan a well-deserved cheeseburger. And then he slept the rest of the way. Lucky pup.

Back in Winston-Salem early Sunday morning, we discovered the the Advanced group had been pushed back half an hour. Sigh. After seeing the course, several of us started commiserating about how difficult it was - a 90 degree left pivot, a 180 left pivot, a solid jump (which Duncan had never seen), and, of course, several other exercises. I was most worried about those darn pivots, because its difficult for Duncan to get his large self up and turned around in a really tight space. I told him that if he'd just get some air under his butt, I'd be perfectly happy. He did the 180 pivot just fine, and he got air under his butt for the 90. That meant we only lost three points for that exercise, rather than ten. And he sailed over that solid jump like he'd been doing it for years. For his first ever attempt at an Advanced course, Duncan scored a 95 and took second place (and another cheeseburger on the way home). I'm so proud of him!

Here's Duncan with his loot from this trial - two second place ribbons, two qualifying ribbons, and two toys.


And here he is with his ribbons from the trial in Mebane last month. There was a problem with the ribbons at the show, so they had to mail corrected ribbons to everyone and ours arrived a few days ago. Two first place ribbons and two qualifying ribbons. He also got a place mat and a rope toys as his prizes, but they didn't make it into the picture.


Duncan has another trial coming up this weekend. Thankfully, its in Morrisville and we're not scheduled to run until about 10am, so we'll be able to wake up at a reasonable hour. Paws crossed, Duncan'll qualify both days and earn his Advanced title!