Back On His Game

The newest UKC club in our region, United Dog Sports of Northern New England, held it's fabulous inaugural event this Sept. in Scarborough, ME at Wassamki Springs.  It was a wonderful turnout and a lovely venue to boot.  UDSNNE offered Conformation shows, as well as both Rally & Obedience over the weekend.

I had a seminar planned that was cancelled, so I decided to do a day of show entry on Sunday.  I never intended to get into UKC Obedience, but I figured what the heck.  Go for one more title, and if we're lucky, Total Dog while we're at it.  And of course it's good practice for our other trials.  Plus entering conformation now and then let's me put to use what I've learned in workshops, etc.  Well... at least TRY to.  LOL  If nothing else it keeps my handling "skills" from getting totally rusty!

First up in the morning was Obedience.  In UKC Novice, there are the usual heeling patterns & figure 8, a stand for exam, and a recall - but it is a recall over a high jump flanked by stewards.  There is only one group exercise - the 1 minute long sit - the down stay is performed as an honor exercise during another working team's on-leash heeling pattern.  So it's a little different and more advanced than AKC Novice.
Tripp was back on his game, and beside his typical minor positioning faults, he did well overall.  Figure 8's were quite nice!  Had a few distractions - particularly while setting up for the recall... the judge was very patient to allow me time to get his attention before leaving (or futilely attempt to ;-)  and even generously waited to signal my call until the twerp stopped looking at whatever he was obsessing over and finally turned his head back my way.  I was ready to kill him, but he came through in the end.  Ok, guess he can live to move on to the next show.  hahaha  We ended up with a score of 190 and a 1st place.  Not bad at all!

Very shortly after that was our first turn in the Conformation ring.  We were the only Multicolored Standard Poodle entered, so it was a quick turn indeed, and with no competition we automatically "won" Best of Breed and went on to Group judging.
It was a nice big group with some good dogs.  Tripp showed well and my handling was at least better than it's been in the past. ;-)  I still was surprised when the judge called us out for 4th place in the lineup!  A great thrill - more than anything because that earned Tripp another Total Dog award!  This makes #5.  :-)

After a nice break for lunch and rest and chatting with my fellow fanciers, we were back in the ring for show 2.  Again on to group by default.  This time no placement.  But I stuck around long enough to nab both our judges, plus one from the day before, for a quick critique, which I don't always remember to do, or get a chance to.  And then proceeded to gab... so much for leaving early.  LOL  Oh well.  It was a great day!

Now if I can just stop forgetting to have an official picture taken when we win something special...  Talk about a brain fart - our judge even mentioned a photo and for some dumb blonde reason I didn't think I needed one.  Um, we just won a Total Dog with a Group placement!  Duh!  LOL  I didn't even bother taking a pic of Tripp with his ribbons at home as usual.  Wow, is the novelty of it all finally wearing off?  Nah...  ;-)

I want to thank all the random people I threw my camera at for helping me capture our ring times on film.  I truly appreciate it.

Here are a couple cute photos taken by Bonnie Buckley of Swiftwater Poodles.