ARFF Fun Day

Today was ARFF's fun day at American K9 Country in Amherst, NH.

I volunteered, so I got myself out of bed at the ungodly hour of 6:45 am so we could get there by 8:30. I ended up being ring crew for the first Standard runs. It was easy. I had to fix the chute and reset a couple of jumps.

It was interesting to see the varied handling techniques. There were a lot of novices, including me. I noted that even though this was a fun match, so you could use toys and food, a lot of people didn't really reward their dogs. In a few cases, dogs were refusing a jump multiple times, and after a few times, the dog finally takes it and the handler doesn't reward!?

I signed up for the second round of Standard. I wasn't really going for perfect performance. I just wanted Shelby to work with me. So we ended up missing a few jumps and the teeter, but I just kept going forward, keeping Shelby with me. I didn't use up my full 2 minutes trying to work out the kinks. I just made sure it was a positive experience. We weren't the best, but we weren't horrible either.

I have to give kudos to the raffle committee. The raffle prizes were awesome. Hopefully I won something, but I'll have to wait and see, since I had to leave before they pulled the tickets.

I got to see Mary and Mattie, and Leslie and Bethoven were there too!

After that we headed to Holly's new barn for a barn-warming party. Spot was off leash and had a great time. Shelby I kept on leash mostly. They were both really friendly to everyone and everyone said how cute they were.

So, it was a long, long day and we are all glad to be home!