We drove to Elstead in Surrey and Mum told me that she had entered me in my first working test, no pressure she said, all I had to do was remember everything we'd been practising in the woods.
Ollie and Auntie Katie went to the Novice test whilst me and Mum went to the Special Beginners test. There were 19 dogs in our group.
I remembered what Mum and said and put my 'game face' on and really knuckled down to it. We did blind and seen retrieves, recalls, hunting and heel work.
We've been working hard on my stop whistle command, it's something we've only just started doing in the last month or so. The judge asked Mum to send me out and then to stop me, sure enough I was belting along full speed and was quite a way off when Mum was told to stop me, she blasted the whistle, I span round and sat my bum down pretty damn quick. I could see by the grin on Mum's face that she was really proud of me, we'd never done it at that distance. When the test was complete Mum made such a fuss of me and was laughing and cuddling me so much, wow if I'd known I'd get that kind of reaction I would have learnt the whole stop thing a lot earlier :-)
Here are some photos of me on the seen retrieve:
Mum listening to the judge explaining what we had to do, I've got my eye on the dummy tucked under Mum's arm
Here I am bringing the dummy straight back to Mum's hand:
Test complete, time for a pat on my neck
When it was all over we met up again with Auntie Katie and Ollie, me and Ollie sunbathed for a bit and then Mum and Auntie Katie got very excited because the ice cream van turned up, honestly these humans are weird!
Do you know the very best bit though...... we were watching the presentations at the end of the day and they were reading out the results for my class, well they read MY name out, FOURTH PLACE!!!! Me and Mum were so pleased and we had to go up in front of everybody and get a certificate and rosette plus some yummy dog food and a lovely new slip lead for me!!! People were clapping and everything it was awesome
What do you think to my rosette then..........
owww wish we had known about this as we're definitely special beginners! Think we'll be too old for puppy when we have learnt everything. Have to enter novice next year. The test didn't look too challenging? Maybe we could do it!
ReplyDeletePs how did you teach the send away? Chester's stop whistle is excellent (not quite sure how?!) but I can't get him to run away from me unless there is a dummy involved!
ReplyDeleteThere's another special beginners session at the Slovakian Rough Haired Pointer Club nr Haywards Heath on the 13th August. If you want to email me I'll send you the details. Its nicky dot mengham at btinternet dot com (have to do it this way or it doesnt show on the post)
ReplyDeleteAs for the send away, I dont know I didnt teach him as such, he just does it, I do say 'off you go' and point open handed or say 'go and play' and he does it. The trainer (who is also at the Slovakian one) John Parnham is brilliant and can explain how to train them to do this as its a common issue.
Nicky