Trialing Debut
Poncho had his debut trialing yesterday and I couldn't have been happier about his performance. Even though the weather was absolutely awful I was on cloud nine.
We were supposed to run two jumpers classes but due to the weather we only ran the morning class and drove home shortly after. My main goal for this trial was to get Poncho to focus. He is a very high drive dog and I feared the trialing environment would be to much for him to handle, but he did so well - I guess my attempt to alter his stress response helped.
We got eliminated due to my handling mistake. From where Tim filmed you can tell the dogs line goes to the backside of the jump. Poncho responded perfectly to my handling; No change of arm means stay on your line which he did. Believe me I won't forget to walk the dogs path again ;)
Considering the fact that we have only been working on small sequences and never whole courses I could not have asked for a better debut! Poncho has only been living with us for six month and he is probably my best trained dog to date.