I decided to enter Bear in one CKC rally obedience trial at the Excellent level last weekend. We had successfully been trialing in different venues (besides home) without food on the course and I thought we might be ready.
I was wrong.
There were 5 dogs in our class. I knew the dog ahead of us and the one behind us so the honor exercise wasn’t a big concern. We did our warm up – Bear seemed focused and ready to go.
We approached the ring as a friend came in to say “hi”, I quickly said “sorry we’re going in the ring” but it was too late, Bear had spotted her and as soon as we were in the ring, he was looking for her – or something else (anything else!!) in that direction.
To say the run was a disaster would be kind. Suffice it to say after a ton of sniffing towards the honor dog (too close for my liking) I took Bear by the collar and asked to be excused.
In hind sight, I probably should have signed up for floor time Thursday night and I should have asked to be excused earlier on in our run.
Compared to other recent ‘failures’, when I left the building on Friday, I wasn’t overly upset, surprised or humiliated…I was…ambivalent…I wasn’t thinking up plans for training for future CKC trials, or going over the performance to see where I might have done things differently – I was just glad to be going home!
This ambivalence combined with the high cost of CKC trials has led me to the conclusion that maybe I need to forget about any more CKC trials with Bear. We have so many other fun things to do right now that I can’t be bothered to waste any more time , money and energy on something that leaves me feeling so…blah!
Ayoka Bubar BA, CPDT-KA 