That Wasn't Such a Great Idea

Have you ever had one of those moments, often just after you’ve passed the point of no return, when you’ve started wondering if some action you’ve taken or something you’ve done wasn’t such a great idea? 

Most people experience these epiphanies several times during their lifetime. One of my more profound occurred at O-Dark-Thirty at the close of the fourth day of officer candidate school, when — exhausted, hurting in more places than I thought possible even though I was actually quite fit, and both mentally confused and abused — I began to question whether opting to serve the nation had been a wise choice. Along about that time, writing obituaries for the Peoria Journal-Star was looking pretty attractive.     

But as I’ve interviewed dog people over the years, I’ve discovered that most of them, especially those who participate in field or performance activities, have at some point been hit with the realization that something they have just done with their dog wasn’t such a great idea. What’s more, their dogs also knew it and, in most cases, took action to ensure that their owners would never again entertain such foolish thoughts.  

Sitting at ringside a few years ago with a lady who was a serious obedience competitor, I mentioned that one of my more embarrassing moments in dog sports had occurred in obedience: On a very muddy track during the “fast time” exercise, I had slipped in the mud and gone down, taking the dog’s legs out from under him. The two of us slid under the rope marking the ring boundaries, and both the dog and I blindsided several onlookers, knocking them down into the same muddy morass.  

When she stopped laughing, she said she could easily top that in the humiliation department. 

One time, one of her OTCH dogs had been goofing off outside the ring and she wanted him focused. So, she had accompanied her “Stop it” command with a fairly stout yank on his leash. She said the look the dog gave her should have been a warning, but she failed to recognize it. That failure would not only prove costly, but would also result in considerable embarrassment. 

The dog’s performance through the early Utility exercises had been outstanding — until they got to the directed retrieve. That was when things went seriously south, and she realized that correcting the dog just prior to entering the ring hadn’t been such a great idea.  

“When I sent Raj to the lefthand glove, he ran out and picked it up,” she explained. “But instead of bringing it to me, he carried it to the center of the mat and dropped it on the middle glove. Then he ran over to the righthand glove, picked it up, brought it to the middle glove and dropped it. 

“Even though he already had the gallery laughing, me red-faced and he’d cost us a qualifying score, that wasn’t enough revenge for Raj,” she continued. “He circled the glove pile three times and proceeded to lift his leg on the pile. Not content with expressing his contempt for my actions with just a couple of squirts, he spent a considerable amount of time making certain he thoroughly watered the entire glove pile.”

All of which was bad enough, but the worst was yet to come.

 “Faced with having to retrieve the soaked gloves, I could hardly condemn the ring stewards for saying ‘It’s not in my job description.’ So, I wound up picking up the stinking glove pile, all the while listening to the hysterical laughter from the gallery along with the ‘Clean up to the obedience ring’ announcements from the arena PA system while Raj essentially stood by and smirked,” she sighed. “It truly wasn’t one of my better moments. But you can bet I never again even considered correcting him before we went in the ring.”

When his handler corrected him outside the Utility obedience ring, Raj retaliated by putting all the gloves on the directed retrieve in a single pile and lifting his leg on it.

I was once the beneficiary of another handler’s “It wasn’t a good idea” moment. Unlike my other dogs, who only did obedience to humor me, Casey actually enjoyed it. Not as much as fetching birds, of course, but unlike her kennelmates, she didn’t view it with disdain. As a consequence, her scores were frequently quite high, and she was in the ribbons on all three runs for her CD in both the U.S. and Canada.  

At the end of a Canadian obedience trial, Casey was tied for High in Trial with a Shetland Sheepdog that had finished her Canadian OTCH that day with her win in Utility. So not only would an HIT be the icing on the cake for the Sheltie and her owner, but the entire show was celebrating some milestone either for the Canadian Kennel Club or the host club or both. 

In any case, there was a beautiful rosette along with a silver tea service for the HIT winner, which the Sheltie owner coveted as a commemoration of her dog’s completion of her OTCH. But with two dogs tied, the actual winner had to be decided by a heel-down.  

Ginger resented having her playtime interrupted just before she entered the ring for a heel-down for an obedience HIT.

When I found out that Casey was tied for HIT with an OTCH Sheltie, I remarked to a Canadian friend that the heel-down between a novice Chesapeake and an OTCH Sheltie should take less than 30 seconds. I was correct — but not in the way I anticipated. 

As we waited for the heel-down to begin, one of the members of the Sheltie owner’s obedience club came to ringside to congratulate her on finishing her dog’s OTCH. The Sheltie began playing with the congratulator’s dog, and the Sheltie’s owner put a quick and stern stop to the play. Seeing the Sheltie’s reaction to the end of her playtime, I turned to my Canadian friend and said, “She may regret that.” 

Sure enough, when we got ready to do the heel-down, the judge commanded “Forward.” While Casey did just that, the Sheltie didn’t, remaining rooted to where she was sitting as her owner stepped off. 

Exiting the ring having collected the “swag,” I heard the Sheltie owner ruefully tell her obedience-club friend, “I guess getting after Ginger right before we went in the ring wasn’t such a good idea.”

Unlike her kennelmates, Casey enjoyed obedience, just not as much as she loved hunting birds, but enough to get her into a heel-down with an OTCH Shetland Sheepdog for High in Trial. 

On a different occasion, sitting watching an agility trial, I got to chatting with another spectator. It turned out he was very much into agility and had trained several MACH dogs. We were talking about training dogs for field or performance events when I mentioned that I’d gotten some very good advice once upon a time from the late Phil Berger, a very successful retriever field-trial trainer who, in his time on the field-trial circuit, had trained and handled 14 dogs to their field championship. 

Phil had said he never, ever trained a dog the day before a trial because sure as hell, something major would go wrong and there was no time to fix it. The agility guy shook his head, laughed and said he wished he had known Phil. Then he went on to recount his “not a great idea” moment in agility.  

“I was training a Parson Russell Terrier, and he was really quite a good agility dog,” he said. “While he didn’t finish his championship because an injury cut his agility career short, he did get his MX and his MXJ. 

“In any event, the week before a trial, he was getting pretty sloppy about his jumping, taking down a bar every now and then in training, so I resolved to do something about it quickly. 

“I knew I had to institute a penalty for knocking a bar down, so I first tried making him repeat a jump until he got it right if he knocked down a bar. That didn’t seem to have the desired effect, and I was getting desperate, as we were getting closer and closer to the event. Finally, a friend of mine, who also rode hunters and jumpers, suggested I might try moving the bar up as Riley jumped, similar to rapping a horse to get them to snap up their feet over a jump. That seemed to do the trick, as we did it in training for the two days prior to the event, and while Riley appeared to be insulted every time we did it, he did start respecting the jumps. 

“Fast forward to the event itself,” he continued. “When I sent Riley to the first jump, he ran toward it very purposefully, but slid to a stop just a few feet in front of the jump. He walked up to the jump, flipped the bars off the pegs, backed up and then sailed over the jump at the same height as the bars had been. He did that with every single jump on the course. Run to the jump, stop, walk up to it, push off every bar, back up and then take the jump at its original height. 

“The gallery and the judge were in stitches, and it was pretty apparent, even to me, that what we’d done to correct his sloppy jumping hadn’t met with his approval. It was also quite clear that he didn’t want me to have any lingering doubts about his opinion. Needless to say, adopting that particular training method from the hunter/jumper world hadn’t been a very good idea.”  

If training the day before a trial or test is unwise, what about training on the evening after the first test of a back-to-back set of tests? A lady I knew who had a wonderful German Shorthaired Pointer champion and soon-to-be Master Hunter faced that dilemma after her dog blew her off seriously in the first day of the tests: He broke when he was supposed to be honoring his bracemate’s point, and then he grabbed the bird the other dog had been sent to retrieve. As this was the last set of tests for the season and the dog only needed one more qualifying score for his MH, his owner decided that some drastic corrective measures were needed.  

When she mentioned that she was going to have to get on Dieter big time, I repeated Phil Berger’s warning, but she said she couldn’t just let him get away with his naughtiness. Since I was judging Master the next day, I knew I’d have a horseback view of just how well her plan had worked.  

To call Dieter’s performance the next day “dreadful” would have required a considerable upgrade. From five possible bird contacts, he stole point twice, once scooping the bird out from under his bracemate’s nose. On the third bird, he jumped in and bumped the bird, then chased it all the way out of the bird field. On the fourth bird, he did have a nice point, but broke the minute his owner flushed the bird. And on the fifth bird, he didn’t even bother with a point, but rushed in and caught the quail as it flushed, then dropped it and rolled on it. What’s more, he performed his act pretty much in the bird field, where there was ample opportunity for the other handlers to see and laugh at Dieter’s Oscar-worthy role in the best comedy of the day. 

Overall, Dieter had a “whee” of a time telling his owner that serious correctional training on the night between two tests was not a good idea. 

Dieter made it clear to his owner that serious correctional training on the night between two hunt tests was not a good idea. 

In all likelihood, if you do dog sports, sooner or later you will have one of those ignominious “It wasn’t such a great idea” moments. While at the time you probably would like nothing more than a giant sinkhole to open up and swallow both you and your dog, just keep in mind that these things happen to virtually everyone who teams up with a dog to do field, performance or companion work. Eventually, it will be your turn to laugh at some other handler’s unfortunate lesson.