Hey look at that!

PJ and I started our “official”  rally class last night.  We started with attention exercises which our trainer calls the “airplane” didn’t take PJ long to figure our how to get the food.  I think he will do well.  Just like when I was working Stoney in agility I found out that you can only do an exersice a few times before it got boring, no DRILLS with a Cardigan. Our trainer, Liz, had set up a mini Rally course so we could start working with the heeling and the signs, by the third time of the heeling pattern I started to lose the attention, but I almost couldn’t blame the boy, there were lots of things to look at. 

What we saw at the park last night:  We saw a couple of women with their kids and unleashed chihuhuhuas get out of their car and come and sit 30 feet from us and let their unleashed dogs run up and bark and snarl at our dogs.  Mean purebred dog lady (ME) asked them nicely to leash their dogs and then yelled at them that this was public park and there was a leash law in El Paso.  They left but didn’t leash their dogs.  A group with young boys set up on the other side of our rally signs to practice football drills, we saw one of the Dads teach his 3-4 year old boy to pee on a tree right next to our set up when the park’s bathroom was 50 yards away.   We also saw a group of 4 women walk right through our rally course while one of the people was working her dog then went and stood at the start line laughing and talking (not about us or the dogs) so it was no wonder that we needed to work on attention.

Even with all the distractions PJ did well and we had a good time.  It has been well over 100 degrees here for more than a week but the nice thing about the desert is that when you are in the shade and there is a breeze you can still enjoy the outdoors.  I was worried it would be miserable but it was nice.