Rally RL1 title this weekend at Goleta Valley Dog Club in California.
He received scores of 201, 202, and 206 (out of a possible 210
including 10 pt bonus) and 4th, 3rd, and 2nd places. He also tied for
first in Veteran's but lost the runoff by time and got 2nd place.
What makes this little dog amazing is not only was he working for me,
the owner/handler he only met at the end of May this year, and after
only 5 weeks of Rally class, but he did it in his cart. Candy was
owned and trained (beautifully) by his former owner, who unselfishly found
him a new home this past spring when she could no longer lift him and
he was cooped up all the time as a result. Linda trained him for
agility (after a basic obedience class) at which he excelled, but in
2004, at the age of 4, he ruptured several disks and unsuccessful
surgery left him paralyzed. Linda then trained him for his TDI and
did therapy work with him until her own health kept her from being
able to work with him anymore.
I adopted him from Linda in May, just after he turned eight (the
minimum age for APDT veterans), and put him in a local rally class as
a way of bonding, but he loved it and was so good at it that we looked
for competition. I knew AKC wouldn't let him compete but was happy to
learn that APDT would. Then I was unhappy to learn that Goleta Valley
Dog Club holds the only APDT trials on the west coast, so we skipped
out on agility this weekend to drive the 4 1/2 hours to Santa Barbara
to compete.
