Ian versus the dogwalk

The dogwalk won this round. Ian fell off the dogwalk today in Toledo. First run after 6 weeks off and the contact obstacle he's most afraid of, and he falls off. UGH!! It was the only mistake of the run. His weaves looked ok. At least he stayed in them, but they weren't as fast as practice has been. In three runs, he was slow but did his weaves and never thought of coming out. At this point I have to be happy with at least working through them.

Back to the dogwalk. It was a pinwheel in the corner of the ring with two jumps to the dogwalk. There wasn't any place else for him to go but line himself up and get on that blasted thing! I could tell the whole run he was looking around and eyeing everything. He seemed fine outside the ring, but inside he wasn't 100% focused on his job -- obviously!

At least two people came up to me and said he never got his feet under him. I heard him scrambling but didn't dare look back until right as he fell off. He almost made it to the top, but couldn't hang on. He landed on his feet, looked a little stunned and definitely like he wasn't supposed to be on the ground. Then I called him to me and he came right away, I patted him, told him he was OK and walked him to the end of the dogwalk, which kind of worried him. But I sent him into the tunnel and headed out of the ring for the last 4 jumps. He was fine. He did stand at the exit gate looking a little sheepish like he was pretty sure he wasn't supposed to fall off the dogwalk.

I was really hoping there was a dogwalk in FAST, but they took it out! DARN!! My plan was to head right to the dogwalk, do it and then get out of the ring and forget the whole FAST thing. I called Kim K. just for the reassurance I was thinking right. She gave me great advice I hadn't thought about. In FAST there is no four paw safety rule, so if he gets on the obstacle with less than four paws but bails, put him over another obstacle and then try the dogwalk again. Brilliant advice! I wouldn't have thought of that!

The plan for tomorrow is just give Ian a good line and support for the dogwalk and confidently tell him to "walk it." I don't think he's really all that traumatized. He didn't freak out and try and leave the ring, and he did FAST just fine including a teeter at 20 ft. away from me. The only way I'd pull him from Standard tomorrow is if there's a tunnel dogwalk discrimination. He will likely take the tunnel and really stress at the dogwalk, so I'd pull him if that's the case.

Seriously, he's a MACH dog who was in the Finals of the 2007 AKC Invitational! You would THINK he'd stop looking around and worrying about stuff and do his job!