The basement is too boring for effective distraction training.
I would like a do-over on this weekend. However, since Ctrl + Z only works on my computer, I’ll just have to take it as a life lesson and move forward.
I entered Risa in an AKC rally trial. This was her first attempt at the Excellent level. Even with having Jagger in the house for the last few months, I had still been working with her on focus and her positions. I’d been laying out rally signs, toys, treats, and other distractions while we worked on her behaviors. I even had Jagger scent everywhere as he was worked before she was. I saw some improvement in her focus but I knew that it wasn’t quite distracting enough. It is really tough to replicate a trial in your basement!
Despite knowing this and having noticed a significant drop in her attentiveness over the last several months, I thought we’d be okay. We attended a fun match last weekend and she was actually pretty good. In fact, her serpentines were the best I’ve ever seen out of her! I was confident that we had a decent shot at qualifying and placing during the trial.
But it was not to be. I was all out of sorts on Saturday; full of anxiety and stress. That is very unusual for me. I’m usually pretty laid back and ho-hum about trialing even when I am a bit nervous. Granted, I have been very stressed out lately and I wasn’t feeling good over the last few days. Risa read it easily and was very distracted. I’m not sure how we managed to get around the ring. She actually performed the signs decently; it was just between the signs she wandered off. We somehow still managed to qualify with a score of 77 and earned a 2nd place finish. I was bummed that I hadn’t had a good time with her in the ring. Rally is supposed to be fun! I vowed to do better the next day.
It didn’t matter. I still wasn’t feeling all that great and felt some of that same anxiety again as we were preparing to enter the ring. The course itself pretty much set us up to fail. The first sign was the “back up 3 steps in heel position.” This is the one sign in all of AKC rally that Risa cannot do. I haven’t really trained it and I knew she wouldn’t do it. Even when she is focused, Risa is a bit distracted for the first few signs. Having one she can’t do as the first sign was going to hurt us. It wasn’t the sign that ruined our day, though. I never had Risa. She was never with me. Right off the bat she went and sniffed the judge. She wouldn’t even look at me when I called her name and I had a devil of a time getting her to stay with me. We attempted the first sign but it wasn’t even close. I was able to direct her over the jump for sign number 2 but we never got a chance at sign 3. Risa wandered off and then got upset with the dogs standing outside the ring. It was a minor reactive moment; a quick, soft “boof” and a jump back. Not enough for most people to realize that’s what it was nor enough to get us banned from competition. I walked over, grabbed her collar, and we left the ring.
Mistakes are how we learn. If we never screwed up, we’d never improve.
I am upset with our performance but I’m not upset with Risa. I should have realized she wasn’t ready. I mean really realized. I said “We’re not ready” dozens of times. . .even before I sent in our entry fees. I thought we could still pull it off. I should have known better. When she started losing focus during freestyle, I should have started working harder. It’s difficult; we don’t really have a good place to train around trial-like distractions. Now that it’s wintertime, we’re lucky to see another dog at all on our walks. There are no busy outside locations to train in. And we haven’t been to a class in more than a year. It shows. Clearly it shows.
All is not lost. It’s an expensive lesson (though it could have been worse) but now I know we really need to step it up. Due to her nature, Risa is not the type of dog who can focus and concentrate even if she hasn’t recently been in crazy situations. It’s not that she doesn’t know the signs or the behaviors. She simply hasn’t had enough practice being attentive to me when there is so much going on. We start a rally class this week. We’ve taken it before but she really needs the distraction training and it’s pretty much the only class available for us. I’m also in the process of becoming a member of the local training club which will also allow us more opportunities to train around trial-like distractions. We’re done competing for a while. Our next trials aren’t until spring/summer. We have plenty of time to really hammer home the basics. Then we’ll be golden.
