Utility!!!!

I put Wicca in Utility today at the funmatch- and she was awesome. It gave me goosebumps and choked me up a bit. Utility. Seriously Awesome. I have never had a Utility dog. Never even gone in the Utility ring before. Wicca has known the Utility exercises forever but I have never put it all together. Until today. And she was great. :) I love this dog to bits.

Her routine was far from Perfect. But I haven't trained some of this stuff in a long time (because we can't get out of open....) But for not having much training she did pretty great!  I had to double cue her for the directed jumping. (but she did the hard part of the go outs!!!!!) She needed some help with the articles, and her signals weren't really there. But she did it all. And pretty well. I am so proud of this dog.



Now if only she could get some confidence on those stays for Open, or maybe they will get rid of the stays all together....and then we could seriously train for Utility and not just dabble in it...although I must say it has been fun to train!

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This was Pixel's first time doing everything all together for Open and it blew her little brain. :) She tried though. Her heeling was great- she was up, and excited, and focused- and that is awesome as we have had to work very hard to build that! But she was slowly losing it throughout the routine. By the time the broad jump came around she was done. It is very apparent though that as much as we have worked on fronts they aren't fixed...Anyone have any ideas of what I can do for better fronts? I've done a bit of Chutes, and tons of feeding in position, etc. But still she doesn't seem to get it... I am happy with her though- and it gave me an idea of where she is and what I need to work more on....



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I brought everyone so Boone did a run through of Rally too- he had fun although was a little stressed by the end of the course. It was long  and pretty twisty. He sure likes his pivots though! Vito came out and did some socialising (sticking to his meeting new people rules..). And Brit came out and amazed everyone with her cuteness. :) She jumped up on everyone, and mooched for cookies, and practiced her sits, downs, and hand touches...Oh, and she tugged. Like a mad woman. It was awesome. I think it may be time to reinforce some manners though...

So now I have very tired dogs, and we've been hanging out all evening and just chillaxin'...