Lo Baker Seminar at Riverside K9

Yesterday Shelby and I attended a seminar hosted by ARFF at Riverside K9 with Lo Baker. It went really well. Not so much because of the agility, but more because of how Shelby acted overall. There were 8 dogs there. A couple of aussies, a couple BCs, a sheltie, a Portuguese water dog I think, and Irish terrier and us. One of the dogs was the one who attacked Shelby at the ARFF agility field last summer. And a couple of the other dogs were reactive, which was great! Because I got to work on keeping Shelby calm and attentive when other dogs were acting up. Plus I was proud of myself for making our needs known to everyone as far as Shelby liking to visit and that we were working on it. So Lo asked people to crate their dogs and not engage with Shelby if she came over. She did stray once, but overall, not too bad. Her performance wasn't as good as it normally is, but we were in a different place with different people, so I didn't mind.

We did one run-through, then Lo gave us some pointers. Nothing I didn't already know, really. Then we worked on weave poles. She had 12 poles set up. Shelby did pretty well, considering we normally work on 6 at a time. Her entry was pretty good, she had a tendency to pop out in the middle, but finish ok.

Shelby paid good attention to me, and wasn't overly interested in the other dogs. At one point she even laid down at my feet and just relaxed, which was awesome. There was one little BC who was very barky and was getting everyone riled up. At one point I put Shelby in her crate with a PB Kong so I could run out to the car and grab my donut that I forgot, and when I came back in there was a huge commotion and I heard Shelby barking and crying, and I thought, "Uh-oh". I thought maybe I hadn't closed the door and Shelby escaped or something. But it turns out the little BC came running over to Shelby in her crate and instigated a fight. So Shelby wasn't in the wrong at all, which was great. The other owner felt horrible, but it was fine.
I think we probably could have been in the Intermediate session, but I was happy overall with the outcome of the morning.