The Spaniel Annals

I wrote about Ruckus in my last post, the visiting Irish Water Spaniel who is enjoying his new job with me in obedience and most likely freestyle.  He is smart and willing, and so I told his owner that, yes, I could have him ready for Rally Obedience at the National.  That National is now less than 3 weeks away, which means we’ve been busy compressing approximately a year’s worth (or more) of training into 4 months.  Can Ruckus handle it?   From the video below during last Thursday’s rally run-throughs, I’d say, absolutely!

Right now the challenge is weaning Ruckus off of his food motivators enough to get us through the time period of a typical rally novice run, which is a little over a minute.  The video below shows a first run with food visible, and then a second run with food invisible (but still on me), with one food reward in the middle of the course.   Fortunately rally allows the handler to use verbal encouragement, which Ruckus responds to exceptionally well.  For formal obedience, that will also need to be much reduced, but for now, I’m using all the tools I can.  I’m very happy with Ruckus’ attention, position and happy tail-wag throughout!