Rally Girls

Katie and I went to our sixth Rally class last night. For those of you who are not familiar with Rally, it's similar to obedience, but is a lot more fun. The main differences are that your dog does not have to be in perfect heel position, you can give a command more than once and you are allowed to talk to your dog. The judge wants to see a display of teamwork between the handler and the dog. Talking to your dog is my favorite thing about it. Katie loves to hear my voice. It really peps her up and gets her attention. Also, rally trials are set up as a course with stations, so every time you do a run it will be different. There are 31 different station possibilities for rally novice. Some are very simple like a left or right turn, fast or slow heeling, a sit or a down. Other more fun and challenging stations are mingled in like 360 degree circles and walking a serpentine pattern around some cones. We are also practicing the advanced and excellent exercises in class and we are doing pretty well. We both LOVE rally. We hope to enter our first competition in Hot Springs, AR this September.

A kind guest at our dog school took the below pictures for me. Unfortunately some of these really needed to be in action mode, but I am making do with what I have . We can just say they have a impressionist look to them and call them photo art.

Look at Katie's excellent attention. I am so proud of how far she has come. The most important thing for me in any class is that Katie and I both have fun. On the few nights that I forgot to focus on having fun, our class didn't go as well. Lately, I am keeping it in the forefront of my mind and we are both doing great and having a blast.

Katie and I just completed the very challenging halt/90 degree pivot/halt. This is not an easy exercise and it's more challenging to us than most teams due to the size of Katie bodacious booty :-) She has to quickly swing that big rear around and tuck it in fast... very tricky. Note her beautiful attention again. I love it!

Katie STEPS over the tiny jump, but at least she went over it correctly. Some dogs wouldn't go over it unless their owners did it first.

This photo is a very artsy one - haha.
Katie and I are doing an about left turn. She is still paying attention :-)

Another Impressionist Photo...
This is the stand your dog and walk around it exercise.