RAE Leg #1

Roxie earned her first RAE leg this past weekend with scores of 87 in Excellent B and 95 in Advanced B. I think I messed up the footwork on the 180 degree left pivot in the Excellent class for a 10 point deduction. Wasn't able to look at the score sheets to confirm this, but the judge made a point to stress tight pivots in his briefing in the Advanced class that followed and in the video clip, you can see him furiously writing something on the score sheet after we did the pivot.

Excellent B run:


Advanced B run:


Warming up:

On deck and practicing some attention before our turn in the ring:

Doing the Honor exercise in Excellent:

Yay! We got a Q in Excellent!

Roxie tries to catch a nap while we wait for everyone else to finish their turns in the ring:

Yay!! Our first RAE leg!


I was really proud of Roxie at this trial because not only was it outdoors, which is always more challenging with all the added distractions, but it was her first test to see how well she can handle doing two runs at one trial. And she handled it all very well! I felt better about both of these runs than I have about any of our other runs in quite awhile. Roxie's attention on me and execution of the exercises was very nice. And I know she wanted to sniff some stuff in the ring (two dogs had marked in the ring!), but she composed herself and did everything she was supposed to.

Our next trials are this weekend, where we'll be going for 3 more RAE legs at some shows which are part of the American Manchester Terrier Club's national specialty. We'll see a lot of Manchester Terriers there, which is really unusual at most trials, so it'll be fun!

Only 9 more RAE legs to go!