PACE trial - Growing Pains

Kili and I went to a local 2 day weekend trial. I was really happy with how she did even though we didn't get as many Q's as I would have liked. Her listening skills continue to develop nicely. We had some very tricky courses and she did really well. Most of the mistakes were mine... including a really epic crash in one of our Standard runs. Things not to do in agility... run into equipment. I was not seriously injured, but it did really hurt, so I spent about 2 minutes rolling around on the ground while the ring crew tried to hold Kili back. I was touched by Kili's concern (and impressed by her ability to turn around on the dogwalk). It was nice to know she actually does care as she is a pretty independent dog.

Two problems I noticed at this trial. The first is her crate behaviour. As she has improved in the ring I have noticed a steady decline in her ability to just chill out in her crate. I heard her screaming and carrying on a lot more than usual, and she also chewed the plastic zip ties holding her name tag onto her crate door. I'm not entirely sure how to resolve this as she already has a crate cover and she tends to ignore chewies and Kongs at trials.

The second problem was that a couple of our runs had a bit of work to be done right near the exit, and Kili would think we were done and go to leave to get her jackpot, except we still had a couple of obstacles left! Since noticing this I've started leaving the jackpot in different places so that she doesn't necessarily know where it'll be, which will hopefully keep her attention more focused on me until I TELL her we're done.

Kili finished Starter Gambler with a very nice run (despite thinking we were done and trying to leave the arena). She just needs to complete 2 Snooker runs and she will have her Starter Games Dog of Canada title. We haven't attempted Snooker yet as it tends to be a very disjointed game and if you make any mistakes you get whistled out immediately. Now that her focus is coming along though, I think she might be ready to try Snooker!