First: The good news! We passed.
Second: The super news! All the people (5 of us) that are in the same training group, who entered the test... all passed.
Third: The super great news! I spoke with the judges after and looked at my sheets. The judge said she liked my dog a lot. But for a bit of a hunt on a flier... she would have scored 4 10's on marking. She liked our blinds. Dog answered each whistle, took each cast, made consistent progress to the blind, we challenged the blinds... no big overs...and she scored us really well on trainability for that reason.
But: Here's the bad news. She crept off that line like it was hot. She wanted to be anywhere in front of me. On the honor, she d@mn near broke. It was a near run thing.
Consequently... we will train like the dickens for the next 5 weeks. Make her wait for everything in her life. (See this thread http://www.retrievertraining.net/forums/showthread.php?97834-Creeping-Correction-1-Way) And enter the Senior at Sage Hens, snatch her off the line saying NO! HEEL! I SAID SIT! WHAT ARE YOU THINKING! SIT!, thank the judges, load her up and drive home. That will be it for our season, and we may do the same thing when we enter a HT in February. And the next time and the next time.
I think her unbelievable passion and drive to get the ducks... probably a desire beyond my ability to feel (I let my prefrontal lobes tamp down such raw emotion and unless you're confined somewhere, you do too) ... makes denial at the hunt test the only way to translate what she knows from every other facet of her life. I think ultimately, that is the only solution, and one that will need constant maintenance.
But for the habits I've learned on RTF... she would have been GONE, especially on that honor.
Second: The super news! All the people (5 of us) that are in the same training group, who entered the test... all passed.
Third: The super great news! I spoke with the judges after and looked at my sheets. The judge said she liked my dog a lot. But for a bit of a hunt on a flier... she would have scored 4 10's on marking. She liked our blinds. Dog answered each whistle, took each cast, made consistent progress to the blind, we challenged the blinds... no big overs...and she scored us really well on trainability for that reason.
But: Here's the bad news. She crept off that line like it was hot. She wanted to be anywhere in front of me. On the honor, she d@mn near broke. It was a near run thing.
Consequently... we will train like the dickens for the next 5 weeks. Make her wait for everything in her life. (See this thread http://www.retrievertraining.net/forums/showthread.php?97834-Creeping-Correction-1-Way) And enter the Senior at Sage Hens, snatch her off the line saying NO! HEEL! I SAID SIT! WHAT ARE YOU THINKING! SIT!, thank the judges, load her up and drive home. That will be it for our season, and we may do the same thing when we enter a HT in February. And the next time and the next time.
I think her unbelievable passion and drive to get the ducks... probably a desire beyond my ability to feel (I let my prefrontal lobes tamp down such raw emotion and unless you're confined somewhere, you do too) ... makes denial at the hunt test the only way to translate what she knows from every other facet of her life. I think ultimately, that is the only solution, and one that will need constant maintenance.
But for the habits I've learned on RTF... she would have been GONE, especially on that honor.
