The Princess wasn't feelin' it...

On Friday night at the funmatch Pixel didn't go down on her drop on recall. And that was the theme for the weekend. In both trials she refused to down. The second trial she sat and wagged at me instead. Cute, but not quite what I wanted.

Pixel just makes me smile though. I mean, she is so cute. Even when she crossed behind me on the figure 8, and spit the dumbbell at my feet on the retrieve on flat. How can you get mad at such a cute dog?

In Pixels world she is a princess. And the princess never does what she doesn't want to. I guess that's one of the pitfalls of mostly positive training- if the dog doesn't want to you can't really make them. lol. The trick is to teach them to want to, no matter what, and we obviously are not there yet.

She did have some really good moments- her heeling was the best she's ever given me in an obedience ring. Her fronts were 100x better than before. Her retrieves were cute, and perfect. And she did the broad jump!! Both times. Although the first trial she kind of launched over it like a bunny. The second trial was better and she had an almost perfect broad jump. And she had rock solid stays both days. I am so proud of her!

In Pixel's defense I hadn't done much with her the week before and I was more than a little distracted. And I am not a serious obedience people. I watched some of the "serious" obedience people and was amazed at their dogs. The focus is incredible. The dog has no doubt about what they are supposed to be doing. If I were serious about Obedience I could have that. But I'm not. I just am not that kind of person. I also am not the type of person to train with a pinch around my dogs neck, or wack them with a stick if they move on the moving stand exercise, or ear pinch them if they don't run fast enough for a go back...Yes- all of that and more happened at the show this weekend. It was seriously
disturbing. There were lots of positive people there though- in fact my favorite performance was by an Aussie named Finn who was amazing. Happy, perfect, and the girl never raised her voice or corrected the dog in any form. It was during my funmatch and I was blown away. I understand it was her first trial. I never saw her in the actual ring so am not sure how she did but I was pretty impressed. I believe that you can get great results in the Obedience ring without having to correct your dog all the time. I just wish I had the time and motivation to prove it. lol.

I am proud and very happy with my little bouncy princess dog. I love that she feels she can sass me in between exercises. I love that she wasn't stressed in the ring- and wanted to work with me. She wasn't perfect, but there was certainly improvement. We are going to keep puttering away at it. Not sure when I will enter her again. Probably spring. We'll see how much I work at it and go from there.