On Saturday we went to a companion show that usually has obedience...travelled all the way to find they didn't this year. In fact we'll gloss over the whole thing, it was too hot and just not a good day :lol:

On Sunday I had found out about a companion show which definitely did have obedience! If it had been anywhere in land I wouldn't have gone - too hot for the dogs - but it was right on the coast, so off we went. Arrived (with full compliment of dogs - Vale, Solei, Darwin and Elton) and it was gorgeous - perfect temperature with fantastic views over the sea. I'd decided to just put Darwin in the pedigree classes, Vale in the Veteran novelty class and then do the obedience with Solei and Elton. There were only two obedience classes, the first one I couldn't do (won too much) and there was no way Elton was ready for the second one, so I entered Solei in that class and then put Elton in the first class Not For Competition, to do a training round.

Darwin was 2nd in his AV Toy class - because "we must encourage the children"!! I kid you not - the judge actually SAID that to me, as she placed a young girl of around eight 1st and Darwin 2nd. Vale won AV Veteran, and then at the last minute I decided to put Solei & Elton in the Brace - which they also won!

In the obedience, as it was a relatively basic class (heel on lead, heel free, recall with finish and sit and down stays - ie nothing that requires him to work away from me and then get the opportunity to run off) and it was fairly hot, I decided I would take Solei in without warming him up at all. We paid the price for that on his first stretch of heelwork, he was working a little further forward than he should which then led to a crooked sit when we did the first halt (very unusual for Solei), but after that he settled and his heelwork was brilliant....recall was perfect, as were stays :-) He ended up 2nd, behind a Border Collie!

When I (eventually) managed to take Elton in for his turn I was very excited about having him at a show to see what he'd do. He did a few puppy classes (mainly socialisation) when he was little, other than that he's never been to an obedience class and I've done very little work with him outside. We've done a lot of practice, but 99% of it has been at home inside! I think I worked with him in the garden once...and this show was on grass.

He was a star! I was absolutely amazed. We went in the ring and the first exercise was heelwork (only on lead). We've been practicing, but I couldn't believe how incredible he was! It was quite basic heelwork with just a couple of turns, but his position was almost perfect and the judge said (and it was the end of the day, he was the last dog to work) that his heelwork was the best she'd seen all day :-D After that he was very distracted by everything that was going on around him, which caused a lot of problems with his stay for the recall - funnily enough it wasn't the stay that was the problem, it was getting him to sit! Eventually I left him in a stand stay, which worked much better. The sit stay wasn't nearly so much of a problem, he was concentrating a little better by then.

There is so much potential there, I'm very excited for the future <3