Breeze's Obedience Debut

I had planned on Lompoc-the Greyhound National being Breeze's debut in obedience as well as Rally Advanced. An injured toe in May took us out of agility for some time as well as obedience. Greyhounds and toes are a deadly combination. However by the end of June the toe seemed to have settled down and as long as she was in a tape wrap, I able to start training again.

We missed all the Rally classes. There are many new signs since I last did Rally Advanced and I didn't know them all although I thought I did.

The rings were beyond awful. Someone, not an obedience person, thought it would be better for the sighthounds to put bark chips over the bare ground. The obedience ring was so full of chips the ring was moved next door and the original obedience ring became the Rally ring. Many dogs would not sit on the bark and would go around the patches during exercises. Breeze did a fair job despite me performing two signs incorrectly. Rally was first and as I got out of the ring they were calling us for obedience.



The obedience ring was slightly better although still distracting. The obedience judge kindly tried to avoid as many of the bark patches as possible during her heeling. I didn't feel like I had Breeze's full attention in the ring. Going from Rally where you can talk to a dog between and during exercises to obedience where no talking is allowed during the exercise was hard. Maybe a more experienced dog could have handled it. At one point during the off lead heeling Breeze seemed to give up and needed a second  command. She came back and finished well, earned her first CD leg and High In Trial but we still need work.