Wags for Wishes
July 10 & 11, 2004
Del Mar
~Anne's Report~

This weekend the pups and I traveled to Del Mar for the Wags For Wishes
event, what a great deal that was. If you have never seen Lure Coursing before,
all I have to say is, you just gotta see it! They had a very spread out
agility-type course, (low jumps, a tire, some tunnels, a few long hurdles) and the
dog chases a plastic lure on a pulley system. It was a serious
instinct-inducer and the dogs all went nuts for it, even those who had never seen it before.
So much fun to watch.

They had agility, flyball, herding, lure coursing, obedience, conformation,
carting (yes, dogs pulling miniature horse carts, and the bigger dogs could
pull thier owners sitting in the carts) CGC testing, Jack Russell races - it was
just a great doggie weekend.

My plan was for Zip to do obedience just on Friday, and then Kiwi would do
agility on Saturday and Sunday. That was the plan.

So we start on Friday in obed. with the long sits and downs. Zip decided
that with the traffic noise on the street above him and the sun in his eyes and
the rising temperatures making a heavy coated dog a bit sleepy, that 55 seconds
was plenty long for a sit and the laid down just before the judge said "Back
to your dogs." Goober. His heeling was pretty good and the judge told us
that had Zip not failed the long sit he would have won the class with a 195 out
of 200.

So now the plan had to change. I couldn't let Zip get away with that in a
trial situation, so I entered him in Obedience on Saturday and Sunday for good
measure.

On Saturday I played with him a bit and "fixed" our long sit problem. He
performed nicely when asked, he sat for the entire minute and then the lie down
is never a problem (so far) for Zip. At the end of the long down, when the
judge said "Exercise finished" the neighbor 3-year old intact-male curly coated
retriever jumped on Zip and tried to mount him. Zip gave him a dirty look and
a low growl, and let him know he is not that kind of guy. Zip was very good
in his heeling on Saturday, and he was stellar in his off-lead heeling in that
round. Zip redeemed himself and won the class with a 195 on Saturday.

On Sunday we did our sit practice prior to the event, and Zip was super for
his one minute sit in the ring. Hooray! We were again next to the dopey curly
coat retriever for the sits and downs. When the judge said "Exercise
finished" for the one minute sit, the curly coat tried to mount Zip again. I saw him
coming and bounced him away from us with my lower leg. The handler reset his
dog and we put the dogs in their down position for the 3 minute test. I
didn't feel right about it but the judge said "Leave your dogs" so being a Novice
I felt I had to leave. About 40 seconds into the down the curly coat got up
and lept on top of Zip. Zip stood up immediately and had his tail straight up,
growling softly and a very serious look in his eye. "Look dude, I respect
all kinds of lifestyles and orientations, and I know I am pretty cute but No
means No!"

There was a woman standing right by the ringside, I think she was the curly
coat's breeder and must have known he was an unreliable hormonal dog, and she
grabbed him right up. I went and put Zip back in his down, but the judge told
me to take him out of the ring. Later she said that Zip was not the
instigator so he was able to do the 3 minute down by himself. He passed that part and
our heeling pattern happened about 4 hours later. This was only the second
obedience trial I have been to, but all the others have been multiple ring
trials. This was a one ring trial with one judge, so you did your sits and downs
at 9:30am and the heeling for Novice A was well after the lunchbreak, at around
3:00pm. So by Sunday afternoon Zip was fairly brain dead. He was great in
practice but then when we went into the ring he was very distracted.

He had a few wide turns and some sloppy sits. He didn't lose any points on
the recall (although I thought his sit was just a tad crooked) and he won his
class with a 193. So Zip has 2 legs of an ASCA CD, I don't know when we will
ever go to an ASCA obedience trial to try and get his title. But overall he
was a very good boy who dealt well with some very unusual conditions this
weekend. One of the highlights was watching a Novice B obedience dog and handler
team, they were incredible to watch. Someone said this woman already has an
OTCH on her other golden, and her form was absolutely flawless. Her dog was
amazing too, they were one of the best teams I have ever seen (in my extremely
limited obed. experience). On Friday this woman and her dog earned a 199, and I
am sure Saturday and Sunday scores were the same.

Poor Kiwi got the short end of the stick in her Jumpers classes on Saturday
and Sunday. I literally ran from Zip's heeling portion to the jumpers ring,
completely flustered and unfocused. So our Jumpers runs both days were not
great, and Kiwi was the recipient of some very unorganized handling. Her Standard
classes both days were very nice, but we had a missed A-frame contact on
Saturday and she missed a tough weave entry on Sunday. Little faults but I was
very surprised by how fast she ran and how healthy she looked. She was super,
too bad my brain was left in the obedience ring.

So I would highly recommend the Wags for Wishes trial next year for anyone
looking to have some fun with their pups. The vendors were very cool, there was
always something to go and watch, there were fun events for spectator dogs,
and the you go home tired and happy after spending the weekend with your best
furry pals.

:-) Anne