The Spaniel Annals

I started a draft a few weeks ago to reboot this blog, and found it full of tiresome excuses as to why I haven’t been blogging.  Instead, let me just say that Kani’s death 3 years ago seemed to drain the fun away from recording the training adventures with her and her offspring.  While the training hasn’t stopped, the blog did.  Enough said.

To reboot, I think it’s much more productive to celebrate the wonderful obedience year I’ve had in 2016 with my obedience buddies: Rozzie (Kani’s daughter), Journey, and Robbie (a new addition 2 years ago, an English Cocker).

Rozzie finished her Utility title at the very last trial of the year.  It’s been such a joy watching her confidence build in this challenging class, where there is a lot more independent work away from the handler.  Supporting her through her learning and showing process has been crucial.

During this year, she also handed me a beautiful gift: High in Trial at the English Springer Spaniel National.  While we were flunking Utility at the time, this win came from the Open B class.  This is one of those life-long memory wins, and I’m so glad to share it with this special little brown dog with the huge heart.

Journey was placed in a pet home 2 years ago (for reasons I won’t go into here), and so has been away from me for that time period.  But she came back this spring to stay, and I decided to get her utility title finished up, as I knew she would enjoy getting back to work.  She stunned me by remembering every single detail of the utility exercises, a feat that I don’t think I could accomplish if you took me away from obedience trialing for 2 years!  She finished her utility title in style, winning High Combined (highest score in Open and Utility) at the Irish Water Spaniel regional specialty for her 2nd utility leg.

Her 3rd leg came at in Lynden in early November.  She earned her Utility title on Saturday and Sunday we played with the “big dogs” for the first time in Utility B.  I was just proud to finally have a dog in the B classes for the first time in several years.  Journey astonished me by winning the class and earning her first OTCH points!

After years of wishing/hoping/waiting and training for a dog to be able to compete at this level, this accomplishment has been immensely motivating to me.  As both Rozzie and Journey are both 9, I can only hope they can continue competing in the next year.  Their hearts are certainly willing.

Finally, my  new addition to our obedience team is “Robbie” an English Cocker who came to me 2 years ago as an adult.  He’s learned quickly and has all the qualities of an ideal spaniel companion: biddability, smarts, natural retrieve, and athleticism.  Beyond that, he appears to be “bombproof,” handling the noises and other stresses of dog shows with aplomb.  At the Chuckanut show mentioned above, he finished his Rally Novice title with a 1st place.  All of his scores were 100’s.   The future is bright.