"Grand Champion" of Puppy Class!!!

Wednesday was our last puppy class. It was "graduation" night. We started with a puppy push ups contest, where we had to have our dogs do sit, down, stand, sit, down, stand, etc. Jilly did 19, the next closest dog did 15 though most did less than 10. So Jilly got a little donkey stuffed animal.

Then we did a fastest sit competition, where we walk around with the dogs like we're just hanging out in the park or something, then the instructor says "sit your dogs" randomly and the first dog to sit wins. Jilly won her heat (there are three heats of 3 or 4 dogs each) and came in second in the final round. She got a bag of treats for that.

After that the instructor brought out a partial chute where each person got to bring their dog over and have it walk through. Despite the chute being huge and Jilly being small it still took her a few seconds to come through to my side, but she did it!

Then we had a fastest down contest, same deal as fastest sit, just walk around aimlessly until the instructor says "down your dogs". Jilly won her heat. Then she won the finals. She got a stuffed turtle for that one.

After that we were to demonstrate the tricks we'd been working on since the beginning of class (on our own). We went first, since the instructor asked who had a trick prepared and then who wanted to go first (I was raising my hand to confirm we had a trick) right away. So Craig handed me our little stool and I went to the center of the ring and put it down, then asked her to get on the stool, turn one circle, jump down to the left of the stool and crawl under it to the other side. It's so low that we have to take her harness off and put her collar on for the trick because otherwise she scrapes the harness on the bottom of the stool and she hates that. The other dogs did shake, fetch, play dead, and danced by standing on their hind legs.

Then we got our certificates and the dogs each got a stuffed animal, Jilly's looks like a sun, which the instructor thought was funny since we're moving to Florida. I really wish we could continue classes here, I did contact a dog school in Florida, but haven't heard back yet. I really want to do agility with her.

But, if you add up the "points" for the contests Jilly won, one other dog got two seconds, no one else placed in the top three of any competition more than once. But Jilly had two firsts and a second.

Jilly probably thought it was the best day of her life. She got to go for a run that afternoon (she can keep up with my jog *very* easily and loves running), then a shower, and then during class she got nothing but high value treats for performing plus she got to play with lots of toys since the dogs "picked" their prize when they won a contest.

Or maybe she thought today was the best day of her life...she got to go on a 30 minute hike in a local park with DH and I, then she got to go to the barn and smell all sorts of neat smells while I groomed Sophie. After that we set up a couple of agility jumps from the barn and she loved going over them with me. We only did a few, since we had no treats, but she enjoyed it a lot.