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Dog TrialsSeptember 19, 2010 Was it only a year ago that I went to my very first dog shows? I was accompanied by Travvy, who had never been to a dog show either but since he was only one and a half at the time this was not a big deal. I, on the other hand, was 58, and here I was stepping into a world I'd been only dimly aware of all those years. This weekend those two shows came around again, and once again off we went, in a caravan with our best dog friends. What a difference a year makes -- and maybe that's why it's especially cool to be beginning a new cycle, in which it's not quite so new and some places are actually familiar. I remembered how to get to the fairgrounds. The place looked familiar when we got there. I knew what the ring would look like, and where the restrooms were. Last year Trav and I got the first two legs on our Rally Novice title at those shows. We finished our title at our next outing, in early March of this year. By that point I thought we finally knew what we were doing. We did a "bumper leg"* later that month. In early June, we took off for Wrentham and managed, wonder of wonders, to earn the first leg on our Advanced title. Advanced is done off-leash, which makes it a huge step up from Novice. We tried for our second in mid-August in Fitchburg. No dice, or no leg: Travvy went AWOL just as we were completing the Stand, Walk Around Dog, jumping out of the ring in pursuit of a stuffed toy that I hadn't noticed. Jumping out of the ring is an automatic NQ (Not Qualified). Yesterday was like Wrentham, only better. I had to work at keeping Trav's attention, but I managed, and we Qed (Qualified). Today was like Fitchburg, only worse: at the beginning of our run, I barely had contact with Trav's attention, and by the third station I'd lost it. He struck out across the ring, jumped the ring gate, and rather startled two Dalmatians and their handler between the ring gate and the wall of the (big, warehouse-like) building that the ring was in. He was more interested in scavenging trash than in having a dust-up with the Dalmatians, so I got a hold of him without further incident. (If you hear stories that I leaped the ring gate in hot pursuit of my dog -- these are not true. I was moving pretty fast, but I went through the opening in the ring gate, not over it.) Both days, though, Trav behaved really well. He traveled like a trouper, made friends with lots of people, hung out in his crate (shaded with a space blanket) while I did other things, and was so much calmer and more attentive than he was a year ago, or at the trials we've been to since then. That seriously outweighed the NQ -- we have come such a long way, and besides, we're nowhere near ready to think about competing in Excellent, a prospect we'll have to at least contemplate when we finish Advanced. Katy and Dundee, and Valerie and Toby both finished their Novice titles yesterday, and earned impressive bumper legs today. Valerie and Toby won the class. Karen and Nolan got their first Advanced leg yesterday, but today Nolan, like Travvy, was in a gate-jumping mood. Unlike Travvy, Nolan jumped back into the ring when called. Unfortunately you don't get extra points for that, so they NQed, just like us. Tomorrow we get back to work on maintaining focus (and getting it back when we lose it). Training Travvy is like learning anything: challenging, sometimes frustrating, and so rewarding when we have a breakthrough or I look back and see just how far we've come. When your dog doesn't do what you expect, the chances are good that your dog isn't reading the message you think you're sending. So you pay closer attention to what you're doing and saying, and sooner (if you're lucky) or later, you'll figure out what needs adjustment. Travvy responds to me and I respond to him in this ongoing dance and the challenge is to zero in on what's triggering what. A non-canine high point of the day was Captain C's food tent. Yesterday I had kibbeh balls and hummus; today I sprang for a lamb gyro. Each cost $7, and both were delicious. When you eat out on Martha's Vineyard, you're nearly always disappointed by the food, appalled by the price, or (all too often) both. This stuff was great and downright affordable. At midday the line at the food tent was l-o-n-g, so I sprang for a (non-alcoholic strawberry daiquiri from another vendor. An extravagance that was totally worth it. And of course I have to mention the sausage egg McMuffin lookalike I got at the Dunkin Donuts near the Falmouth Ice Arena, where we gathered to walk the dogs before hitting the road in earnest. The round-trip ferry fare was $31 cheaper than it was a year ago. Who knows why, but I'm not about to look that one in the mouth. This morning my reservation was for the 7:15 freight boat but they squeezed Malvina Forester onto the 7 o'clock. Coming home, we all had reservations on the 5:15 freight boat but fit handily on the 5 o'clock instead, the same boat I was on yesterday. We still had time for a beer at the Leeside before they started loading. This time I was prepared when the ferry doors opened and it turned out we were in Oak Bluffs, not Vineyard Haven. *Each title requires three qualifying scores, each one of which gets you a "leg" on the title. (Don't ask me why four-legged dogs are competing for three-legged titles!) When you finish one title but continue to compete at that level before moving up to the next, the additional legs earn are called "bumper legs."
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