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I have decided I like TRAINING a lot more than TRIALING. Of course I do trial to title my dog but TRIALING is a pain in the neck. You train and train and you are ready then you go look for trials.
In IGP (formerly IPO) you look at club trials (I am US based). You try to find something reasonably close (especially for IGP 1 and IGP 2). Then you look at the trial helper. Some you know. Some you don't know. Some are really good. Others not so much.
Why worry you might say? Well, the trial helper or decoy can make your dog look good or now AND (more important) if the helper is inexperienced he/she can hurt the dog if they meet wrong. This is a contact sport so you want to have the safest helper you can find.
After the helper you need to look at the tracking. If it is on dirt and you have mostly tracked on hay that can be a problem. If it is on a sod farm and not hay THAT can be a problem if you haven't tracked on uniform sod.
Then there is the obedience field. Some clubs use heavy wooden jumps. If your dog makes a mistake jumping, he can hit that solid jump and get hurt and that can make for unreliable jumping in the future and often it cannot be trained out of the dog (some seem to have flashbacks out on the trial field but will train perfectly).
So this is the year I am going to do quite a bit of trialing and I do not look forward to it. It is not nearly as much fun as training.
In IGP (formerly IPO) you look at club trials (I am US based). You try to find something reasonably close (especially for IGP 1 and IGP 2). Then you look at the trial helper. Some you know. Some you don't know. Some are really good. Others not so much.
Why worry you might say? Well, the trial helper or decoy can make your dog look good or now AND (more important) if the helper is inexperienced he/she can hurt the dog if they meet wrong. This is a contact sport so you want to have the safest helper you can find.
After the helper you need to look at the tracking. If it is on dirt and you have mostly tracked on hay that can be a problem. If it is on a sod farm and not hay THAT can be a problem if you haven't tracked on uniform sod.
Then there is the obedience field. Some clubs use heavy wooden jumps. If your dog makes a mistake jumping, he can hit that solid jump and get hurt and that can make for unreliable jumping in the future and often it cannot be trained out of the dog (some seem to have flashbacks out on the trial field but will train perfectly).
So this is the year I am going to do quite a bit of trialing and I do not look forward to it. It is not nearly as much fun as training.