Woo hoo! Dudley boy is off to the races! The way one of our agility instructors put it was "the switch has flipped and the light is now on!"

Dudley has been my remedial agility student. All the other dogs he started with in agility class have moved up to Intermediate after their first Beginner class. Dudley is taking his third round of the Beginner class. But as sometimes happens, things all finally came together for him. First I took him to an AKC agility trial in St. Louis over Thanksgiving. I didn't plan to run him because he was doing a "see exit, take exit" behavior. My instructor said that I shouldn't trial him until we'd solved that because we didn't want to reward or reinforce that behavior. We planned to run Taffy and just take Dudley along for the ride. I was going to take that opportunity to get him measured for his AKC permanent height card. When I was at the table asking about the VMO, I mentioned that I was totally flexible on time for the measurement because I wasn't running my dog. A woman standing there broke in and said "You can't do that. You can't have a dog measured if he's not entered." I was pretty certain she was wrong but I bit my tongue. All I said was "My dog is entered. He's just not going to run." Her reply to that was "You need to look into the legality of that. I don't think you can have your dog measured." Again, I was certain she was wrong but I felt like this was the type of woman who'd make trouble. Therefore I decided that I'd go ahead and run Dudley. I'd already missed the Novice JWW run that day but I got up bright and early the next day to make sure I'd be there for the Novice JWW walk through.

Day two of the trial dawns and I get there just in time for the Novice JWW walk through. I'm walking the course first trying to see what the dog sees. Low and behold, there is no apparent exit! Woo hoo! In reality there's a huge exit. This is an equestrian center and there's a huge double gate. However the gates are angled in such a way that they look closed from inside the ring. I can't believe my good fortune! We're up and Dudley runs like a dream because there's no apparent exit. He completes the course in about half the SCT! Now I do have to say he would have been slower if we'd weaved. Unfortunately Dudley doesn't weave yet because some medial issues prevented us from adhering to our training schedule for weave poles. Since we don't weave we just ran past the poles like they weren't a part of the course. If he'd have weaved, he'd have qualified! We did the same thing on day 2. It was grand. Way to go Dudley!!! I rewarded him like I'd just saved him from disaster. Turned out those runs were the catalyst we needed.

Now I have expectations. I entered Dudley in a NADAC trial in December and picked the runs that didn't have weave poles. I wanted it to be fun and I wanted it to be possible for him to Q. It was a 3 day trial. We entered 2 of the 3 days and only 2 events each day. We entered Jumpers 1 and 2, Touch and Go and Tunnelers. Dudley was a stud! He was perfect! He had tons of fun! Look at our ribbons!

He got first in both jumpers runs, second in Touch and Go and first in Tunnelers! The instructor who taught Dudley in his 'baby' agility classes was there and she was stunned. She's the one who said "the switch has flipped". He was running like a different dog. He ran with confidence and joy! Good boy!

Because of that, I entered him in another trial. This time I entered him in a CPE trial in St. Louis. I got ambitious and entered him in 6 events, 3 each day of the trial. This time he was entered in Full House, Wild Card, Snooker, Jumpers, Jackpot, and Colors. On day 1 he qualified in all his runs. On day 2 he qualified in 2 of his 3 runs. The only NQ was Snooker (I still don't exactly understand that game). He was running level 1 so the qualifications in Wildcard and Colors got him his level 1 Fun Games title. His qualifications in Jumpers and Full House got him his level 1 Handler Games title. Woo hoo! Look at this haul!

We're really starting to gel as a team. As soon as I get them edited, I'll put the videos of the CPE trail out there so you can see my boy run. I'm so proud of him! And I'm making fewer handlers errors too (although I still make a fair amount).

Our current agility instructor has set our goal to be weaving and doing teeter in 6 weeks. We've got a lot of work to do!

Cheri and Dudley