Most dog sports are fun for dogs, and if my dogs don’t enjoy whatever competition we enter, then we move on to something else, there is so much to choose from these days! When you compete in conformation, obedience, barnhunt, or any other sport, the dogs don’t care about winning, they only care about having fun with you, their person. So no matter how much we enjoy winning the ribbons and titles, if our dogs aren’t enjoying the competition, then they won’t excel. People tend to forget that these sports, trials, shows and events should be an opportunity to enrich our dogs lives, and provide a wonderful opportunity to bond with them. I’ve seen competitors forget this, and get frustrated with their dogs when they didn’t win. And the dogs don’t understand why their person is unhappy with them, they were just having fun.
When we lose, and we do our fair share of losing, we try to remember that our collies did their very best, and we praise them like they are the best dogs at the show or competition, because they are. There is a great quote by W.R. Purche, “everyone thinks they have the best dog, and none of them are wrong.” My collies are always trying their best to understand what we are asking them to do. Sophie and Sorsha figured out the rules of Barnhunt pretty quickly. There are only three things: 1) climb up on a hay bale, 2) go through the tunnel, and 3) find the rat. It is timed, but with a few practices, most dogs seem to catch on instinctively and are able to do all three in the time allowed. I wanted to share this video of our recent Barnhunt practice. Sophie and Sorsha have done multiple Barnhunts now, and you can see they get right to it. Peyton tried it for the first time, so they made it easy for her to find the rat. One thing I noticed afterwards, that made me smile, Sophie’s tail never stopped wagging, she was having a great time!
This weekend we are going to try a new sport that we’ve never tried before. I’m hoping the collies enjoy it, all the dogs I’ve watched competing at trials seemed to be having the best time! Come back next week and I will tell you all about it!
Sophie did look like she was having fun! We can't wait to hear all about the new sport your dogs are trying out!
ReplyDeleteIt looks like everyone was having fun. We would like to hunt rats too, but have to be satisfied with chasing the rabbits that get into our fenced yard. BOL!
ReplyDeleteCharlee: "A rat-hunting sport? Can we cats participate?"
ReplyDeleteChaplin: "Now now, Charlee. We have to let the dogs think they're better than us at at least ONE thing."
We agree, it should be all about having fun with your dogs! Their lives are too short to forget that!
ReplyDeleteHi hi hi! Ojo here! Congratulations on your Barn Hunt! I only did that once. I had to sit in a crate for almost the entire day, then they let me go look for the Rat but there were four people staring at me and coming very close and it was stressful and so I peed on the straw and then they made me leave. It sounds like you did much better than I did! Good job!
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