Obedience training for Winner Class

Route to Winner Class

We have been to two trials in Winner Class. First one was one paw away from first price and second went more off. I first had in mind of just trying to compete but I got to my senses. I wanted to improve our weaknesses and built her ready better for the higher classes. In the end after one first price in winner class we have to make three first prices in OB4 to become ob champions. Freya is also pretty good in ob so we might even try our luck in the National Championships. But we have more few challenges ahead and the biggest one is her sensitivity.  

We have done lots of work to make her comfortable near people. In last trial she got distracted from work of ring guide. She wanted sniff her every time she showed us our new starting point. This little distraction and checking her our took part of drive. So we need to do lots of work to make everyone in the ring meaningless. She has done already a lot of progress. But as you can see from our training video from last week she still get tense every time we go near people. This same can happen with dogs when we do the laying down or sit in a row. Freya's confidence is pretty fine line but it can be built to be better.

In overall she has improved in every task. Our biggest challenge has been the box. Freya has had a habit of stopping before to first cones. We have done position work from close range and helped sending from  long distance ( by this I mean going half way to send her so that I'm closer to box). Work has finally started to pay off. I think we will be soon ready to take another try in winner class. She has speed and super work ethic but I hope we will over come her fear to people and dogs so that she can work with full confidence.

Here is our video from our last training. This was competition mode training where we did about three task in row without reward:

That's all for now!!!

MPF