Cold Or Wet, but Not Both

It rained on Wednesday morning. We waited until we were at Applewoods to do any training, and we worked around the puddles and through the soaking wet leaf litter that covered the ground. It wasn’t warm, but it wasn’t cold either at 60*.

The training session was very productive because Rugby was convinced that he absolutely, under no uncertain terms, could not do Signals when the ground was wet. He was refusing to sit all together. When I asked him to lay down, he would go down until his belly touched, then hover just before that point. He might have been more persuasive with me about how unfair working outside was if he was consistent about it. However, since he could clearly sit and tolerate the wet ground when he was beside me in heel position, there was no reason he couldn’t tolerate it 40ft in front of me.

It took us several attempts at Signals before Rugby got over the fact that his belly was wet. We finished all the other Utility exercises outside with no problem. We saved Scent Articles for inside. To mix it up a little, we added a char to the middle of the Scent pile. The articles were placed around the chair (not under), although it didn’t stop Rugby climbing into the middle to find the correct one. He did have a little bit of trouble getting out from under the chair without disturbing the other articles, but he made it.

I didn’t realize just how valuable that training session would be until last night, when I finally decided to check out the judging program for the shows we entered this weekend. I had Googled the location of the show and noticed it was being held on a plantation. Odd, right? That is when I saw what it said at the top of the judging program…