Fun on the Contacts

Happy Gracie rolling in the grass on a sunny day, June 2008.

It's common in beginner classes that you never quite know what kinds of dogs you'll have to deal with. There is a rude female mixed breed named Shawnee in Gracie's class. Shawnee has a thing for my Gracie girlie.

Shawnee is a large, leggy dog that looks like she could be part rottweiler, part doberman, part...who knows. She is a rescue, about a year old. She stares, she rushes other dogs and puts her head over their necks, she has no sense of space, and in general shows many signs of poor socialization and a complete and utter lack of self control. She lunges at Gracie whenever we walk past. She's never made a sound but the silent ones are the ones I trust the least.

So far, Gracie has shown a lot of maturity and basically ignores this rude dog.

On Monday night, while we were waiting our turn to run an exercise, I was letting Gracie get on the Aframe and practice her contacts. She wasn't doing the complete Aframe, just going up a few feet, turning around, and moving into her contact position. We were off to the side and not very close to the sequence obstacles.

Suddenly Shawnee came galloping up, chest-bumped Gracie then stood stiff-legged over my pup. Gracie immediately swelled up like a puffer fish--every hair on her body was sticking straight out.

Neither dog was on a leash. I started to grab Gracie, then Shawnee, then thought better of that idea entirely. Someone said, get between them, so I pushed Shawnee aside with my legs and got between them with Gracie behind me. Shawnee's owner came over and pulled her away.

I turned to find my amazing pup STILL IN POSITION in the contact zone! Technically, I had not released her and she was clearly expecting me to continue to play the touch the target game now that the annoying dog was gone.

Now that is some distraction training!