Piper's UK Working Trials Debut

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October 2000--Piper's first Working Trial was the day before Mom came to visit us from America. The trial was to be held in a huge open field in the middle of farms, and no fences or people around. I was so worried he'd run away that I couldn't sleep the night before. While practicing send-aways two days before the trial, he DID run away in the field behind our house and vanished for an hour. And that was after he saw me set out a tempting bowl of fried chicken next to the target!

Until you arrive at the staging area at about 8 am, you don't actually know where the trial will be held. I guess they do this partly so you can't practice there in advance, and partly so you don't accidentally walk over a track in the advanced classes. There were around 60 dogs at the staging area, but only 9 of us were entered in the lowest class (CD)--4 border collies, a German shepherd, a Labrador retriever, an Australian cattle dog, a Staffie and Piper. All but Piper had competed at least twice before. As soon as everybody arrived, the classes split up and we all followed our judge's car out to whichever field we'd be competing in. Ours was about a 10 minute drive away, and turned out to be a PERFECT area. We all drove behind some farm buildings to an outlying area away from any visible livestock, and surrounded by fields and hedgerows. Our competition course was a pasture with 8" grass and no brambles, no thistles and no sheep poop!

You can't normally watch the other competitors, but our field was so big we could all park on the edge and barely see the dog working on the opposite end. The judge asked us two short dogs to go last, and had us compete one at a time. The judges can make the rules in W/T, so ours decided we could carry a toy and play with the dog between certain exercises. You couldn't use it too much, but it really helped keep Piper focused on working.

First we each did a retrieve into tall grass, followed by the area search, in which the dog has to find 3 small objects in a part of the field the handler's not allowed to enter. Each dog does their search in a new square, too, so they're all equal. Piper got 10/10 on the retrieve, and was one of only two dogs to get 20/20 in the area search (while I thought he was scheming to run away). Then we ran back to the car for treats while the tallest dog began with the next set of exercises.

These were the heel on/off leash, the recall, and the send-away, followed by the three jumps. The heeling goes on forever, in tall grass, and has lots of pace changes. We had to do a slow....halt, followed by an immediate FAST...about turn from the halt. Ouch! I thought we did great and Piper stayed with me the whole time, but we were docked tons of points for me twisting around to look at him the whole time. In working trials, "natural" is all-important!

We got perfect marks on the recall, then on to the send-away. The judge had us send our dog from the middle of the field to an unusually tall barbed-wire fence post along one side. It was about 50 yards away. I think only 2 of the dogs got anywhere near it, including the dog who later won. This is Piper's worst exercise because he wants to go an American obedience distance--30 feet--and he'll only go farther if he can follow a human track up to it. But in a competition, there's no track, because nobody has walked anywhere near the target for days! Anyhow, I sent him out, and he went 30 feet and put his nose to the ground. I was afraid he'd find a rabbit track, so I downed him and told the judge to leave it at that. So we only got 3/10 points.

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