Monday, July 9, 2007

(Non-)Obedience In Dallas

Well, another dog show, another set of failures. And not just ordinary failures - no, these were the "well, I'm sorry, it's just not her day you'll need to leave the ring now please" kind of failures. The kind that have her wandering around the ring, pointedly ignoring me. You can get away with that kind of stuff for a little while in Novice class, but not in Utility.

So after five more months of training, Bailey isn't any more ready to show than she was back in January, when she was, errr, wandering around the ring, pointedly ignoring me. She never was great in the ring, but she could at least make it through a couple of exercises before drifting off - now her attention span is measured in picoseconds.

And now I have to decide if we are going to continue. We can't just keep doing what we're doing, because it isn't working. And I don't know if we can just take some time off and come back later, because medically she could be gone at any point. So I don't know if that means we've reached retirement time or not. It would be a shame, but it's something I'm considering.

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