Well, after nearly 12 months at getting up at the crack of dawn in all weathers every Sunday morning to train and a near perfect round at the trial run last week, Humphrey and I failed miserably at the Subordination part of the basic dog certificate on Saturday. Among the hundreds of exuses that I keep making for myself, I made the mistake of giving him breakfast first, it was very very hot and I was like a bag of jelly!
We took our places at the starting line and Humphrey promptly lay down ! Following my trainer's previous advice, I called "HEEL" and marched off confidently, - on my own!
After a lot of thigh slapping, calling and cajoling (while mentally adding up the points!), we finally got moving, albeit very begrudgingly on Humphrey's part. After taking his lead off but not stowing it away properly in my pocket (lost points) we did the figure of eight through the group of people. One person obviously had very smelly feet which Humphrey decided needed to be investigated (lost points) but we finally got moving again however by that time I was in a complete lather and forgot which way we were supposed to go. Humphrey, bless him, decided he'd better help out by going and doing a bit of reconnaissance of his own, cocking his leg on the way! (lots of points lost, normally disqualification!)
My one consolation was that the gentleman who turned up dressed in all the latest designer "doggy" gear with a beautiful very obedient labrador and who took first position, let it out that he'd had to start a facebook search action last week when Wonder Dog alias "Ruprecht" had jumped the garden fence and gone AWOL for a whole afternoon!!
The training's been really useful but we don't really need the certificate so we won't be going for it again. Despite being able to walk perfectly to heel on the training ground (most of the time), he still pulls like a train if we go to town BUT he's sociable, he doesn't run off, he's obedient at the times when I need him to be, his recall is pretty good and we love him to bits - and that, at the end of the day, is all I really need!
