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ReservationsSeptember 07, 2009 Travvy and I started Rally Obedience class in early spring. Rally Obedience -- also known as Rally O or just Rally -- is less exacting and more practical than traditional obedience. Dog and handler navigate a course of between 10 and 20 "stations," at each of which handler has to persuade dog to perform a certain exercise. These range from simple (halt, sit) to complex (call dog forward, take 1, then 2, then 3 steps backward with dog sitting at each pause, then finish right or left). At novice level, the dog is on a leash, but the leash must be loose; you lose points if it's tight, and you're not supposed to be hauling your dog around with it. At advanced and excellent levels there's no leash at all. At the first class Travvy was so excited by the other dogs and the horsey smells (it was held in the indoor arena at Arrowhead Farm) that his brain was barely engaged most of the time. He was so out of control that I thought of withdrawing then and there. The second class we missed because he took off while we were out trail riding and didn't return to the barn till after dark. Maybe we'd flunk out for missing a class? No such luck. We showed up for the third class. By the last class, Travvy was a different dog. He could focus on learning exercises and doing practice courses even with other dogs around. Luring him away from particularly enticing smells still took a few treats, and if he got too close to another dog, he'd lunge in his direction, but the improvement was amazing. When the course ended, most of us continued to practice informally with our teacher, Karen Ogden, who has two dogs doing Rally herself. Trav and I have participated in two Rally demonstrations with the group, one at a sedate dog celebration at Sunset Park in late June and the other at the high-intensity ag fair last month. Trav's ability to handle distractions has gotten better and better. He pays closer attention to me, I pay closer attention to him, and all in all we spend more time on the same wave length, or at least in the same ballpark. So by July I was thinking what would never have occurred to me in April: maybe Travvy and I should go to a real Rally trial? I poked around on the American Kennel Club (AKC) website and learned that there were two trials on one mid-September weekend in Falmouth. Once you get across Vineyard Sound, Falmouth is close. Pretty soon almost our entire group was planning to go. Entries opened on August 3. I signed us up. Were we ready? I thought we were heading in the right direction, and the trials were still more than a month away. We'd see how things went at the ag fair. Karen said that if your dog could stay focused on you at the fair, then the trials would be like practicing in a library. Travvy handled the fair very well, other than snapping at a judge who came out of nowhere and tried to look at his teeth. ("Teeth? You wanna see my teeth? Here are my teeth!") If you live on Martha's Vineyard, signing up for an off-island event is only a first step. The big hurdle is getting a ferry reservation for your vehicle. I kept putting it off. Were we really going to do this? Were we ready? The entry fee for each trial was $27. That I was willing to lose. A round-trip ferry reservation this time of year goes for $88, and since I didn't have anyone to crash with in the area, I was going to need two of them. When Travvy and I were in sync, I'd be ready to whip out my credit card. When he was more interested in sniffing the ground than in listening to me, I'd be thinking, This is nuts. Not to mention -- not only have I never watched a Rally trial, I've never even been to a real, recognized dog show. I call myself a recovering perfectionist, but when contemplating a totally unfamiliar situation where absolutely nothing is under my control, recovery tends to go into remission. My worst-case fantasies looked a lot like Christopher Durang's The Actor's Nightmare. Yesterday I took out my credit card, sat down at the computer, and logged on to the SSA (that's Steamship Authority if you live on this side of the water, not Social Security Administration) website. I got the on/off times I wanted, both days. Turns out we're all on the 9:30 boat Saturday morning, which answers one of my 101 scary questions: How will I find my buddies when I get to the fairgrounds? We had a good practice today at the school playground. I managed to do one practice run with no treats at all -- you can't carry any food into the ring with you, which is just as well because treats that someone else dropped are a major distraction for Travvy and his classmates. Handler error is a big reason for lost points; I remind myself that I know the stations and I'm pretty good at reading signs even under stress. My worst-case scenario at the moment is that we'll enter the ring, Trav will sit, the judge will ask, "Are you ready?" and I'll answer yes, whereupon the judge will say, "Forward!" -- and Travvy will look at me and say, Where's the hot dog bit? I'm not going any further without a cookie! Malamutes are renowned for their sense of humor, and this is exactly the kind of thing that Malamutes tend to find funny. This is why Malamutes are great dogs for recovering perfectionists. No way are they ever going to be entirely predictable, so you better just enjoy the ride. Progress, not perfection, as they say -- and since April we have made some serious progress.
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