Pico had quite a time at the Chicagoland Dock Dogs event in Rosemont IL this past weekend. I now know why some of her friends refer to her as “that crazy nut”.

Pico was certainly delighted to finally be competing again. I had her conditioned to a razor’s edge and she was very keen! She started out just fine, with some decent jumps, but I noticed her stays were starting to deteriorate a bit. She’s usually quite exuberant on the dock, with lots of leaping, barking and cavorting, but as the weekend went on she took it to a whole new level. And her nice stays at the 40 foot mark went right out the window. Pico ignored all my attempts to rein in her enthusiasm and scooted on her butt right down the dock as I walked away to get in position for the throw. I tried all manner of things, from putting her leash as a barrier in front of her feet (she scooted right over it without noticing) to re-setting her, which only made her crazier. Stern threats were laughed at. With 90 seconds to get the dog in the water and very limited practice time I was pretty helpless!

Pico definitely needs to start at the 40 foot mark. It makes all the difference in her distances. But, it clearly was not going to happen this weekend! As Pico got wilder and more disobedient, her distances plummeted along with my hopes for a good placing! By the time finals rolled around Pico was barely pretending to hold her stay. At least in the preliminary waves she had the decency to wait til I turned my head or eyes before scooting forward, in the end she just looked right at me, barked sassily and did as she pleased. I think our jumps in finals were 18 and 16 feet!! Pico hasnt jumped that poorly since her junior jumper days!

I must admit that I love a sassy, high drive, exciteable dog, and Pico is all of that. However, she’s going to have to play by the rules. I’m confident that I can fix this, for one thing I’ve been around the dog training block a couple of times and for another Pico is extremely cooperative once she understands that good things happen to dogs who do things by the book and that dogs who dont listen dont get to play.

In any case, this makes my decision of what to do next a no-brainer. I was thinking about the Dock Dogs event in the St. Louis area next month, but there is no way I’m driving that far again until Pico proves trustworthy. Instead, we will likely make our agility debut in PA that same weekend. There are several local Dock Dogs events coming up in March and we will go to those. We’ll resume our long distance travels to events in the spring.