Ok - so here is a little story on TRUSTING your dog (which I did not on this particular time). This is clearly a handler mistake, not a false alert - for those who know what to look for. For those who need help seeing it:
Rumba was super amped up for some reason and was trying to flip all the boxes over and shuffle them more. I told her to stop it and recued her search. As you can see, she got hung up on the two boxes that were close to each other (I’m assuming there was food on one of the boxes or right beside). She did go to the last box and tried to alert on the last (correct) box but I CALLED HER OFF. I was sure it was one of the side-by-side boxes as she had a lot of interest there - but she never gave me her alert (pushing the box out of the line). Rumba decided I was asking her to do something different so she flipped the lid off the box and sat inside of it. As you can see, she knew where it was all along. I was confused because of the mess she made with the containers and chose not to trust her or resend her to search.
At least it got a huge laugh, it was a cute fail lol. I think I told her she was a jerk as we were leaving the stage. After watching the video….I told myself I was the jerk and asked her for forgiveness.
This was a skill that Jitterbug was struggling with for the better part of the year. We kept plugging along with it and he finally had the Ah-ha! moment while we were on the road this summer. I think he really loves showing off this skill now!!
Moral of the story - don’t get frustrated and give up! Find different ways to explain what you want, think outside of the box. Dogs are smart, they will figure it out as long as you have patience 😊
Playing with the hula hoop (Disco & Rumba’s posted in comments)
This is waaay easier with the littles!
Jitter’s “sad” (head down) trick....maybe we need to phase out the happy tail....😆
Carrying a basket (without stepping in it, or busting the handle)
Dumbbell hold (he did not like this one at the beginning!)
Tricks....Rumba makes it look easy but let me tell you the process....join us in SUPERWOOF! class starting November 5th.
[email protected] to register
For those of you unfamiliar with Rally Obedience, here is a video of Disco’s first Novice trial. She was a little distracted by the videographer (Dad) and the Obedience ring next door.
