Lager and I participated in an obedience trial on Sat., Nov. 20. In many Aussies, maturity is a relative thing. In Lager's case, he only cares about food and women. Pretty much the typical male. He doesn't realize that his nuts were cut off in his childhood, and he eats anything and everything available, whenever possible.
Anyway, back to the obedience trials...when we enter the ring at a obedience competition, in spite of some pretty good training to date, I'm never sure where his attention will take him. All bets are off. The first thing he usually does is check out his audience. The proportion of females ringside is inversely proportional to his attention span in the ring. He doesn't care if the females are two-legged or four-legged; as far as he is concerned, they are all there for one reason. HIM. It's ALL about HIM.
In the obedience ring, things are usually pretty calm as long as he is on leash. At least he's better than he used to be, when he would pull to the end of his leash to try to sniff the stewards' crotches during the figure eight exercise. At least there's less of that these days. No, it's when the leash comes off that things get interesting. Heel Off Leash exercises can be dicey, and on this particular day these exercises were no different, although I had hoped for better (I always do...either idiocy or stupidity on my part...). Of course, I'm delusional. As soon as the leash came off, he trotted to the side of the ring and surveyed the females standing nearby, only returning to me, reluctantly, when called. Twice during the Heel Off Leash exercises he had to run to the fence and bat his eyelashes at the ladies.
It was during the Recall exercise that he made a lasting impression on the judge (yes, the judge was a woman, which he confirmed for himself when off leash, to my great embarrassment). All he had to do was sit still until I got to the other side of the ring and call him. He did manage to do that (hallelujah!), but after I walked to the other side of the ring and gave him the command to come, he took off like he was shot from a cannon. He didn't decelerate as he got closer. I had a vision of my dog flattening me on the floor (60+ lbs. of dog!), so I braced myself.
What happened next was unusual, even for Lager. He never slowed down and I caught glimpses of the judge's face while this all went down. The judge's expectant look was changed to one of puzzlement to one of astonishment and then dismay, as my dog launched himself into my left leg and the left side of my crotch. He bounced off me, then landed on the floor, and then the bounced up in the air, landing squarely on the ground in a sit in front of me.
We may have qualified in spite of that, except he saved the best for last. Yes, we had to do the stationary exercises (it's disheartening for a Novice competitor to have to return to the ring with a dog, knowing that qualification is out of the question). Anyway, never one to disappoint, Lager continued his performance by slowly laying himself down at 58 seconds during the Sit. For those of you who have never participated in competitive obedience, Novice dogs in AKC have to maintain a sit for one minute. 60 seconds. That's all...but it's the LONGEST 60 seconds. Trust me. As I said, Lager broke the sit at 58 seconds, sliding slowly into a down and thus disqualifying us. As if to rub it in, he stood up during the Down exercise, so he could get a better look at a Sheltie doing a Recall exercise in the next ring.
OK, he had a point. It was a really cute Sheltie.
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