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by Chris Robinson
Most of the readers of The Canine Chronicle are aware
that I am primarily a field person—a hunter and trainer of sporting
dogs. But I have also dabbled, and that’s the right word for my
involvement, in obedience over the years. However, while each and
every foray into the obedience ring has begun with the same sort
of high hopes Charlie Brown had each and every time he went to kick
a football held by Lucy Van Pelt, more times than I care to remember,
like hapless ol’ Charlie Brown, the "football" in the
form of a qualifying score was yanked away at the last moment.
I have put a dozen or so titles on my dogs and, in what had to have
been a fit of wild optimism, took one all the way to his UD. But,
my trips into the obedience ring have frequently been fraught with
misadventures and mishaps. Probably one reason for my embarrassing
experiences is that I have never possessed the intense competitive
drive necessary to be among the upper echelons of obedience competitors
although one of my dogs did actually go high-in-trial once but that
was purely an accident. She wound up in a tie with a Sheltie for
high-in-trial and when we went into the ring for the heel-down,
the Sheltie’s owner was otherwise occupied in the breed ring. As
a result, when the judge said "forward" and the handlers
said "heel," my dog moved and the Sheltie didn’t.
But, as I said, my dogs and I have never constituted
a credible threat to the serious competitors. That much should be
clear from my choice of breeds. Merely getting a qualifying score
has been satisfying enough. Not for me or my dogs the daily grind
of drill, drill, drill until perfection is achieved. I never saw
much point in it since my dogs got the very same title behind their
names as the ones that scored 199.5 points and mine got their titles
with far less sheer labor, boredom or trauma. In fact, the only
reason I ever did obedience was because it happens to be the foundation
upon which everything we do in the field with dogs is built and
I used obedience competition much the same way as I use the spell
check on my computer. But that really doesn’t provide an adequate
explanation why my obedience ring experiences have been so star-crossed.
There must have been something more—an invisible aura of doom—that
generated the bad karma that frequently was part of obedience competition
for me.
It all began with my first Brittany. No prima donna, including the
late Maria Callas who led the league in tantrums and outrageous
demands at the Metropolitan Opera, has ever been as temperamental
and tempestuous as was this Brit. She was an arrogant dog, a self-anointed
monarch and, for the most part, she considered obedience work beneath
her. However, when she deigned to do it, it was always on her terms,
not mine. She did it her way and this was never more obvious than
one time at an outdoor event. Usually, on the recall when told "come"
she would first conduct a complete survey of this galaxy and a half
dozen others millions of light years away then her heavenly gaze
would shift to one cloud, if we were outdoors or one spot on the
overhead, if indoors, no doubt seeking divine relief and intervention
rescuing her from this terrible affliction being visited upon her,
preferably in the form of a lightning bolt that would strike down
the idiot who was insisting she do it. When that was not forthcoming,
she would occasionally condescend to stroll in my direction. But
this one time, to my total shock, she took off like a rocket and
raced toward me. Just about the time I was thinking "Wow! I
finally got through to her," she skidded to a halt about 15
feet away, turned her head slightly toward the fence and hit an
absolutely perfect point frozen in complete immobility.
I waited. And waited. And waited.
The dog never moved. The point was absolutely classic. In fact,
so classic that it was one rarely seen except in paintings. I’d
have given my best shotgun to have witnessed a point like that in
the field. This might have gone on for a fortnight or longer except
that finally someone walked along the edge of the ring close enough
to the cover a few feet away and the pheasant rooster who had been
engaged in a stare-down with the Brit decided that discretion was
a far better course of action than winning this particular staring
contest with the dog. He flew off cackling his displeasure at being
rousted from his comfy resting spot. The dog took one step in the
direction of the fence and hearing no shot stopped in her tracks.
Eventually she remembered she had been enroute to me and resumed
her usual queenly promenade in my direction, nodding her head graciously
about every third step in the direction of the gallery, regally
accepting their accolades as merely her due.
The next dog with which I ventured into the obedience ring was a
totally different story. While I was dealing with "her regal
and imperial majesty" with the Brit, when it was the Ches at
the end of the leash, it was Bozo the Clown. He considered obedience
a complete waste of time which was how he viewed every activity
in which no birds were involved. He only did it because he was convinced
I had taken complete leave of my senses and needed to be humored.
To relieve his boredom with obedience, he did his best to think
up ways to make it entertaining and he was at his most creative
when he was in the ring with the entry fee on the line. For one
thing, all the way through open and utility, he never once gave
me a proper front. I did not know where he would end up following
a recall or a retrieve—directly at heel, sitting sort of sideways
off to one side looking at me, behind my back—there was never any
pattern. Sometimes, when completing a retrieve of a dumbbell or
a glove or an article, he’d throw the object at me as he made a
pass along my left side. Occasionally, when bringing one of these
objects, he’d take a parade lap or two around me.
On one occasion though, he did do an absolutely perfect
front. In open on the retrieve over the high jump, he exploded off
the line and, being a tremendous jumper, cleared the jump by a good
foot. He scooped up the dumbbell on the run and, knowing I had this
one in the bag, I took my eyes off him for just a second to make
sure I was in the proper position for him to finish as well as he
ever did. When I glanced up, there he was in a perfect front...
with the judge. He knew the judge from previous times in the ring
and apparently decided it would be unmannerly to not at least say
"hello." And, since it was her house, so to speak, he
could hardly come calling without some sort of hostess gift. The
dumbbell had neatly solved the problem for him.
It seemed like every time we went to an outdoor event, which was
often because it took more than 20 trips into the ring to earn the
three basic obedience titles, it rained. Sometimes the rain was
merely a nuisance but every now and then there were occasions when
it was clear why Noah had built an ark.
One time the rain and resulting mud were so heavy that I had not
seen its equal since the monsoon season in Southeast Asia. The sensible
judge stood under the protection of the canopy but there was no
such escape for the competitors. As the day wore on, the track steadily
deteriorated. When it was our time to go, the ring looked like a
hog wallow.
During the fast time in the heel free exercise, I hit a slick spot
in the mud and grass. An attempt to stave off the inevitable only
increased my forward momentum to the point that when the nosedive
into the mud occurred, I had built up enough speed so that my slide
through the mud took the legs out from under the dog causing him
to fall on top of me as we both skidded under the ropes that marked
the ring boundaries. Adding insult to injury, the dog, who weighed
nearly 100 pounds, in his efforts to regain his feet, managed to
step on my head driving my face further into the mud. It was a dead
heat as to which was the worst casualty—my bruised, mud-bedecked
body or my dignity.
The same dog occupied the starring role in another humiliation in
the obedience ring, this time in utility. While we waited outside
the ring, a friend of the dog’s walked by and he moved rather quickly
in the direction of his friend pulling me off balance. Reflexively
I yanked on the leash. The look on the dog’s face made it clear
it had been a serious and quite possibly fatal error. But, everything
went well in the ring. In fact, better than it had ever gone previously
in utility. Until we got to the very last element of the very last
exercise. When I sent him, he flew down the mat like someone had
lit his tail on fire. At my command "sit," he spun around
and screwed his butt into the mat–the only time he ever actually
sat doing this exercise. I gave him an "over" toward the
high jump and he catapulted toward the jump. There was no way he
could possibly not take the jump and then a qualifying score would
be ours.
It is never wise to count your ribbons until you have them in the
truck and are leaving the show grounds. I speak from bitter experience
in that regard having once been chased down in the parking lot by
the ring steward and told that the judge had made an error in addition
or subtraction or something and the dog really hadn’t earned a qualifying
score even though I was holding a ribbon in my hand that said he
had. Anyway, in the utility ring, about two strides before the jump,
like a quarter horse on a slide stop, he hit the brakes. As I waited
for him to pop over the jump, nothing happened. The dog never came
over the jump, never reappeared. After something longer than an
eternity, he peeked around the side of the jump, leering at me.
Everything about his demeanor said "payback." Finally,
he strolled around the jump and as he passed, expressed his total
contempt for everything connected with the sport of obedience by
cocking his leg and sprinkling the jump as he passed by.
When the son and later the grandson of the UD dog also expressed
their scorn for obedience work, it was clear to me that like Joe
Bfstplk, the recurring character in the old Lil’ Abner comic strip,
I was living with a perpetual black cloud over my head as far as
obedience was concerned. In order to preserve what remained of my
sanity, the only sensible course of action was to throw in the towel.
In the end, although it took a considerable amount of time and persuasion,
the dogs finally made their point.
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