Back in the Swing of Things

I guess holidays are officially over. The boys' "dog stuff" is back in motion, after a couple weeks off.

Tonight there was a CKC Obedience fun match to support Italian Greyhound rescue with the Italian Greyhound Club of Canada. I took the boys with the intention of only running Gio in Novice. Gio needs one more Novice leg, and there is a trial in town at the end of February. We haven't done any "formal" obedience work since the last trial in September, so we were a little rusty. Gio still did very well (considering that he hasn't really found his feet yet after the introduction of his phenobarbital), and pulled off a 195.5/200 and High in Class! Since all the money raised was going to a good cause, I decided to throw Romeo into the Intermediate class as well. I had never seen Intermediate before, it is one of the new non-official classes that CKC has introduced and fits between Novice and Open. Considering that I had never seen Intermediate before, and some of the exercises Romeo had never tried before, he did really well, getting a 189.5/200. He just lost one or two points per exercise, except for the heel free portion where he lost 5.5. Those I am attributing to the fact that he was just SO FREAKIN' EXCITED to be back working, that the first half of the heel pattern he bounced along side me instead of walking and I needed a couple extra commands to remind him of what we were doing. Nothing major, and I'm certainly not going to fault him for his enthusiasm!

Gio just needs a bit more polish and he will be primed for the SKOC trial in February. If I can get Romeo cleaned up a bit, I might even enter him in Intermediate at the same trial. I was going to just skip all the non-official classes, but what the heck, why not!?

Tomorrow it is back to flyball, then Saturday Rally-O and agility. Things are finally getting back to our normal routine!