Rally Novice Title!

This past week has been the Tarheel Cluster Kennel Club Dog Show at the NC State Fairgrounds. It is Wednesday through Sunday and each day is sponsored by a different local Kennel Club. Today, Saturday, was Raleigh Kennel Club, and tomorrow is Fayetteville Kennel Club. I attended Wednesday through Friday with Pogo to get him used to the environment. It's a breed show as well as an Obedience/Rally trial so there are 13 breed rings going on along with one Rally ring and one obedience ring. It's really loud inside the big echo-y Jim Graham Building with all the hair dryers, dog grooming, dogs barking, PA system, A/C kicking on and off, etc. Pogo was a little freaked out the first few times we were there but I fed him yummy treats and he started to get the idea that it was a good place to be and started paying attention to me.

 I arrived early on Saturday to make sure I was on time. They ran late, as usual it seems, so I didn't end up in the ring until closer to 1pm when it was supposed to be 11:15am. I was first in for Novice A, which was kind of scary because I didn't get to see anyone do through the course, but it was a pretty simple course so we did fine. We got a 99 out of a possible 100 points. Another team got a 100 and another got a 99. The team that got the other 99 was a big retriever and so did the course faster than Pogo and I, so in the case of a tied score the times are used to break the tie. So we ended up with third place but he did so well and paid such good attention to me that I was pretty happy with it!

Since this was our third qualifying novice score it means we earned our rally novice title and can now move up to advanced. Technically I have 60 days before I have to move up to advanced. But I don't see any reason to do novice again. Even if we do poorly in advanced at least it'll be more experience for us. Advanced is off-leash, which is a HUGE difference from novice so I'm a little nervous but we've trained off-leash almost exclusively and I think we can do it.
Wish us luck tomorrow, we'll see how it goes!