Surprise!

I entered Peyton in a NADAC trial in Ocala on Friday - Can you believe it? And I'm pleased to say that we both survived. :)

It was kind of a last minute decision on my part, and while I know he isn't really ready to trial, I decided to give it a shot to see what he would do. I entered him in tunnelers first and he took two tunnels and then ran around the ring, stopping a couple times to bark at who knows what, and then took another tunnel before we made our exit. I decided to give it another try and entered him in touch n' go - he gave a similar performance only this time he jumped out of the ring, barked at a couple of photographers, and then jumped back in the ring and zoomed his way back to me. Oh, and he managed to jump out of the ring again on our way out.

Honestly, I'm not too surprised - I really had no expectations...I just wanted to see what he would do. And on a good note, I learned quite a bit from our little experience.

First, I learned that he is going to require a LOT of time working on focus and attention before we run. Because I was running Indy in this trial, I had less than 10 minutes in between her run and Peyton's. This was definitely NOT enough time to get *any* focus out of Peyton before our run. We were pretty much doomed before we even got to the line. I also learned that I have to work on developing a very structured start-line and end of run (or end of zoomies) routine.

I entered Peyton in a NADAC games trial next weekend - only because I think this trial location is about as good as it gets for novice dogs. It only has one ring, and is almost entirely fenced in. I think it will be a good training opportunity, and hopefully with a little more time to work on attention before we run, we might make it past the first two obstacles. But if not, we'll go back to training and try trialing again when we're a little more ready.

Indy ran pretty well at this trial, but small mistakes here and there left us with no qualifying runs...all we came home with was a nasty sunburn. :)

In other news, the spotties had a nice Christmas. Peyton thinks opening presents is the best game *ever*. He had so much fun and as you can see in this first picture, he tried to start a little early with the shopping bag. :)







Hope everyone had a nice holiday! I might post Peyton's runs later - I have to admit, they were entertaining. :)