The Mock Evaluation - not our finest hour

Greetings everyone,

Last Saturday Mom and I had a mock evaluation. It was basically a simulation of the real evaluation that comes on September 23rd.

I wish I could say that we aced it and will have no problem with the eval on the 23rd, but being that I am an honest dog, I cannot. Big heavy Sammy sigh.

First off, it was raining. I DON'T like rain. I REALLY don't like rain. Thank goodness it wasn't storming or we would have been sunk! So I was not in my normal "let's do this" frame of mind. I was more in a "let's go home and hide in the bathroom" state. Mom did her best to reassure me and calm me down, but I was still a bit frazzled when we began the testing.

The first part of evaluation was to have me walk with Mom at a heel, I did not want to do so. There were so many interesting smells on the floor and there were these new orange things on the floor, cones I think they're called, so of course I had to check those out. The evaluators gave Mom some tips on how to get me to focus some more, and that did help a little.

There were other obedience tests and we did fine on those. And we did really good with parts of the aptitude test. I love to be petted so the being petted by the crowd, being bumped from behind and being clumsily petted were a piece of cake! The restraining hug, however, was not. Now I'm used to Mom doing this to me, clapping and squealing and then coming over top of me to give me a big, tight hug. But I didn't know this lady and that made me want to get away from her. 

Since the evaluation got off to a rocky start, it made Mom nervous. Well, actually more nervous than she already was. And that nervousness traveled right down the leash and into me. By the time we got to the "meeting a neutral dog" exercise I was anything but. And then Mom asked me if I was ready - bad choice of words on her part. See, asking me if I'm ready translates into my dog brain as "ready to go for a walk? ready to go chase a ball? ready to go chew on Sophie?" Needless to say, excitement + nervousness = one revved up Sammy. It was not pretty. However, we did recover well after the first miserable attempt at the exercise and did better the next two times.

When we left, Mom was dejected. She felt like she had let me down. She praised me and told me what a great job I did and I appreciated that.

However, I must say that while the evaluation didn't go exactly as we had hoped, we are not discouraged. We will go forward with the evaluation on the 23rd of September. We probably won't pass, but it will be a great way to judge our progress.

So please, keep your paws crossed for us. And if you'd like to help Mom with my training - give her a yelp! Any helping paws, or hands, are greatly appreciated!

More later home dawgs - sniff ya later!

Paws out!

Sammy