My First Trial

October 1st, 2007

By Anu Maurya

Lego, my french bulldog, and I entered to compete in our first trails for Rally Novice A on two consecutive days – Saturday (9/29) and Sunday (9/30). This was our first trial.

On the first day, we arrived right on time at 10:30am, but the trials were running late and we had to wait for about 4 hours before we could get a walk through of the course. During this waiting period, Lego and I strolled around, practiced and watched other dogs that were competing in different Rally and Obedience classes. The course-map was distributed about 45 minutes before the start time. This gave us enough time to practice with it.

There were 10 dogs entered in the Rally Novice A, including Lego. After waiting for such long period of time, I wasn’t nervous at all and just wanted to be done with it and go home :)! Lego got to eat treats while we were practicing, but I was slowly getting famished!

Finally our turn arrived, the steward called us to stand at the ring’s entrance. The Judge invited us in and we stood in heel position next to the “Start” sign. After hearing “Are you ready?”, I acknowledged that we are as ready as could be and we moved forward on the Judge’s command. Lego, a.k.a. Mr. Sniffer, did sniff around, but quickly focused back on me. We did have the dreaded spiral, and especially with small dogs, it makes you very dizzy! Within a couple of minutes, it was all over!

Upon exiting the ring, I had no clue how I did. The judge handed the score sheet to the stewards; they tallied up the score and wrote it on the board. With mixed feelings of nervousness and excitement, I walked up to the board with Lego. I was speechless when I saw the score, it was 96. And not only did we get 96, but we were also the highest score in the Rally Novice A class! Lego got a First Place Blue Ribbon in addition to the Rally Novice Qualifying Score Green Ribbon – but what really made his day was the huge toy he was awarded from the club for being First Place :)! We celebrated that evening but also had to save up some energy for the next day, which was going to be an early morning start at 8am.

Sunday, September 30, we arrived at the trial location at 8am. I checked in and picked up the course-map. This course was longer than the previous day’s and it had the dreaded “Call front, take 1, 2, 3 steps back”. The grass was wet where Lego and I practiced. At first, he didn’t want to sit on the wet grass, but the hot dogs changed his mind ;). A friend that was entered before us; her dog got very distracted and was sniffing a lot. This started to make me nervous. I took a walk with Lego and did some basic turns and call fronts. When we got back, I saw the judge picking up the cones and adjusting the signs. I was confused to what had happened, I asked the friend how she did and what had happened – and apparently her dog had peed on the sign and she got excused out of the trial. All these events and seeing other dogs getting distracted started to make me a little nervous. But I knew that my nervousness would transfer to Lego. I tried to fight it back. Perhaps it was just too early in the morning for us, I thought.

“Are you ready?” the judge asks. I look down at Lego; he was in a trance staring away from me at the other side of the ring. Not a very good sign, I thought. I got his focus and acknowledged to the Judge that we are sort-of ready, and she commanded “Forward”. Lego was very distracted to begin with, but he did well at the “Call Front, take 1, 2, 3 steps back”. The disaster zone was the section with “Sit, Fast Forward”, where you have to run and then go back to “Normal Pace”. Once Lego sat and heard his cue “Lets Go!”, he ran happily, in pure bliss of running freely in a park. And of course I couldn’t get him back to go to “Normal Pace” once we reached that sign! I had to pull him back a little to slow down. At this point in the match, I knew I had messed up and got very nervous. For a split second, I didn’t even know where the next sign was! It was finally all over. I exited the ring and just hoped that we passed with 70+ points.

The steward wrote the score on the board. I took a look, looked at my arm band’s number a couple of times to make sure I was looking at the right one –I was in complete awe. We got 98 and received First Place Blue Ribbon, Qualifying Score Green Ribbon and gifts of a “Novice First Place” leash and pick-up bag case.

Entry Filed under: K9TL Member Blogs, Lego's Blogs