I decided Katie and I needed to go back to school, in order to get that last leg of Rally that she needs to earn her Novice Rally title.  But it’s so hard to find a class I can get to while working full time almost an hour away.  So tonight I decided to take her to a drop in class of novice obedience.  I figured we could work on our heeling and get ourselves ready to try for that last Rally leg.

Except I read the schedule wrong.  And got myself registered for Open Obedience..which is a drop in class, but they are doing stuff we’ve never done.  Like dropping on our recalls…and jumping over stuff to get a dumbell that we don’t even own…

The class started out with the long sits and downs…the very first thing was a 5 minute down with the owners out of the room.  Poor Katie.  She went into her down and then watched me leave with sad brown eyes.  I told the instructor we had never done this without me being in the room, so he let me go back out after a couple of minutes.  She was much less stressed.  This was my first indication I was no longer in a novice class.

Regardless, she did the five minute down and the 3 minute sit without moving.  Good girl!

But heeling?  Well, that’s the reason we need to be back in school for sure!  The instructor honed right in on us and gave me quite a few tips.  Katie didn’t like him and tried to hide behind me every time he was near.  Which didn’t help our figure eights either.

And when I turned around after crossing the ring for our first recall I couldn’t even SEE Katie because a big German Shepard was playing with his Mom, his rear end in front of her and his tail slapping Katie in the face.  And she was sitting there stoically waiting for me to call her!  As soon as I opened my mouth, before I even called her she was on her way to me.  And she didn’t stop and sit in front of me like she was supposed to; she ran around behind me to hide.  Poor puppy.

After that it was pretty much downhill.  The instructor politely suggested that perhaps we weren’t ready for Open.  No kidding.  I thought I was in Novice!  Next week I need to try to get there at 6:30 when the Novice class is running…rather than 7:30 when I THOUGHT novice was happening!

Katie say…”GEE MOM!  What did you get me into anyway?!”  She’s sleeping now.  Probably having nightmares!