Breeze NA NAJ or Bendy Breeze

Breeze earned her NA and NAJ titles at the agility trials in Livermore Ca Aug 3 and 4th. She is fast and fun to handle. I have learned a lot of handling from her mother Whisper but I also made many mistakes. I hope to improve my handling with Breeze. Two mistakes that plagued Whisper and I throughout her career was holding contacts and lead outs from the table.

By the time I realized I had a problem it was almost too late to fix them. With Breeze I vowed to teach her early on what I wanted in a trial.

In her second and third Novice Standard videos you will notice I am trying to leave her on the table and lead out. I am nervous to go very far, when dogs are in a trial their adrenaline is high and they are almost hyper responsive. At least at the Novice level you can make two mistakes and still qualify. Her contacts have been excellent until the last contact of the third Standard run-the dog walk. She jumps off to follow me to the tunnel. Allowing her to do this would lead to earlier and earlier leaving  or to jump the contact zone entirely which is what happened with Whisper. So instead of making a big deal of the mistake , a simple Uh Oh!! and stop running for a second or two will hopefully correct the problem.








Now on to Open which allows only one mistake per run!

Western Sighthound Combined Greyhound Specialty

The Western Sighthound Combined Specialty in Lompoc is a yearly event. The Greyhound Club of America has the Western Greyhound Specialty at this site. On Friday July 27 2013 we had our conformation and obedience specialty.

Best of Breed was GCH Aroi Aryal Remarkable aka "Brego"and his owner Donna Arcaro.  A big congratulations to both of them. Brego has long been a favorite of mine so much so that he is the father of the Whisper puppies.

In obedience Echo did super-her first time in the Open A ring and she went High In Trial with a 196. This was especially suprising since she had been in bandages with a lacerated toe, then a broken tail, then another lacerated toe. She had been in bandages for at least 6 weeks before the specialty, hence minimal to no practice. Stitches came out and bandage off 4 days before the specialty. We quickly had to practice our teamwork.

Breeze also had her first attempt at Rally. In obedience I always start my dogs off with Rally. It is much easier and more interactive than regular obedience. She also did a great job earning her first Rally Novice leg with a perfect score of 100.