Suddenly Summer

I woke up on monday after 3 night shifts (working all night and sleeping all day) to find that suddenly summer had arrived. The temps soared into the 70's and then the 80's, which is quite intense in Norway. The sun is shining from a cloudless blue sky. There was a light breeze waving the branches of the trees, and best of all the forecast is for it to stay like this for at least a week!

So on the weekend I took Lucy to Oslo Dog Show, which is a two day obedience and agility trial. The weather, as forecast was gorgeous!. The trial was held in a old quarry, surrounded by woods and lakes on the outskirts of Oslo. As we rounded the top of the hill early saturday morning we got our first view of the event.

After parking I looked for a good place to set up our crate and stool backpack for the day. On a slope overlooking the action was a row of tents. In the space between the second and third tent from the left we set ourselves up. 

Here Lucy rested in her crate between walks in the area, and trips down to the ringside to watch the action, pluss her own runs, while I sat beside her making the fall schedule for work, and playing puzzles on my ipad. 

Those are her toys inside and her water bowl in front of the crate. 

I was very happy with our runs. We qualified on both runs on saturday. About half the dogs disqualify in each run in class 1, which is the beginners class, which we compete in. Lucy is very malleable, she goes where I show her, but I still need to do a lot to improve my handling, as well as starting to add some commands that I can use from a distance. 

On Sunday we disqualified on both runs. It was totally my fault.  The breeze had died down, and the heat was stifling. Lucy does NOT enjoy heat, and I have taken to wetting her down just before our runs to make it more comfortable. She is also easily distracted by the environment: tons of strange dogs and people...So I shouldn't have led out beyond the second jump in agility. She went around it and as I was trying to turn her around to take it she misunderstood and took a tunnel instead. Ooops! The jumpers run she started off course after the second jump, I called and she skidded to a halt turning towards me and knocking over the long jump in the process. That was what disqualified us. I didn't realize it though and we continued through the course. I was proud of Lucy who completed the course with me including the weavepoles on the third try, and the collapsed tunnel (her most difficult obstacles). 

Not our run, just a picture of a jumpers course.

I've started to figure out how best to prepare my dog for competition. I try to balance resting in her crate with walks to relieve herself and for exercise. I also make sure we spend time walking all around the rings, so that she can get used to all the activity and the dogs and people. Just before our run I wet her down if it's hot, and take her to the ringside where we do contact exercises like tugging, chasing me, shadow handling, and obedience. These are to get her arousal up and her focus on me. The remaining work has to be mine. To make a good plan during briefing. To stick with it. To learn the course by heart so that I don't lose focus during the run. I have found that the minute I lose my focus, I lose the dog. Below is a picture from one of our walks around the the arena.