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Willow's Wins!
Willow
has earned SEVEN titles in less then ONE YEAR! Devotion, Determination, and Drive!
October 2009- 1-3 October Willow and I went up to Ohio to the American Chesapeake Club National Show Specialty to
meet "Molson" her boyfriend. On Saturday afternoon we cheered Molson on to a JAM (Judges Award of Merit) out
of a very LARGE (at least 75 entries) Best of Breed class. Way to go Molson! We are REALLY looking forward to
having pups by you!
10 October-
Willow needed ONE more leg to earn her U-CD (UKC Novice Obedience title). For those that know me, you know how much
I dislike having something (a title!) dangling there not finished! COAT (Carolina Obedience and Agility Trainers) was
putting on an UKC obedience trial down in Greenville, SC. I knew it was dicey showing Willow with her JUST coming out
of heat, but I had to see if Wills and I could give it a try! So we headed down the mountain and showed for our last
leg of our U-CD title and SHE DID IT! She got the last leg needed for her U-CD title! Way to go Wills! I
am SO proud of you!
September
2009- 18-20
September- UKC is sponsoring a really neat program right now called "UKC Activity Rewards Program" where
if your Champion dog also earns titles in other venues (Rally, Dock Jumping, Agility, Obedience, etc, etc) they earn a $25
gift certificate to use towards UKC "things." I try hard to be active with ALL of my dogs, so to me,
this is a very appealing program!
Willow, her sire Walker, and Brier headed down to the Hickory, NC shows.
I entered all of them in all 5 shows for conformation and Wills and Bri in Rally and just Willow in traditional Obedience.
Friday- there was only conformation and Walker took BOB/Grand Champion and earned a Group 4!
Saturday- I have not
been to obedience classes with Brier or Willow in MONTHS. I had back to back litters and I just did not have the time
to properly take care of puppies and to train for obedience. I have tried getting back to class, but "things"
have prevented me, so Willow and I were flying by the seat of our pants! Looks like it paid off as Willow got her first
leg, a 4th place (8 showed, only 4 qualified!) and a fairly decent score to boot (180/200)! We then Zipped over the
the Rally ring where Wills was doing her normal "I am a goofy girl" and held the lead in her mouth for the whole
course. NAUGHTY Willow! Because she did this we kept getting "dinged" for "tight leash" and
we ended up with a score of 89/100 for our first RO1 leg!
Sunday- Willow has decided that she is going to blow
her coat, so she is a little "ratty" looking right now. When I passed her off to the gal to show her, Willow
acted up. Fortunately, the judge was understanding and asked for to to set her up and take her around the ring.
That was all she needed to put Willow as BOB/Grand CH. We had the same judge for Groups in which Willow really strutted
her stuff and the judge gave us a GROUP 3! This is Willows FIRST group placement! How exciting! We then
wet into the Obedience ring where our off leash heeling was a little lack luster, but we managed to up our score from yesterday
with a decent score of 184.5 and our second leg towards our U-CD title! She now needs just one more leg to add the U-CD
title to her name! The Rally class rolled around and we earned our second leg in that as well! Woo-hoo!
We need just one more leg to have our U-RO1 title!
Willow had a VERY good weekend and she worked BEAUTIFULLY for me!
I am a very proud owner!
August 2009- 14-16
August After a LONG hiatus from doing anything (because
I was busy whelping out two litters of puppies!) Willow and I ventured out with her sire, Walker, and my friend Becky with
her cute little Border Collie, Vamp down to extremely HOT Montgomery, Alabama to do a Dock Dogs dock jumping competition.
Dock Dogs is a LOT of fun a nice escape from the other competitions that I do with the dogs. I entered Willow (and Walker) in
all sever of the Big Air “waves” and Willow earned herself a Junior Jumper- National title by jumping fairly consistently
in the 10 foot range. She is not a “big jumper” like Brier is, but the consistency is really
what is key. I am pretty proud of her. I am planning on bringing her out to a Ultimate Air Dogs competition
in the next few days. We will see how she does there!
20 August- Willow, Brier, Walker, and Becky with
little Vamp the Border Collie went up to Bristol Family Fun Night in Bristol, Tennessee for a UAD Dock Diving event.
This was a one day jumping event. It was suppose to have been just three jumps and a "final" but I talked
Milt Wilcox (YES! The baseball player from the 80's!) into letting us have one more wave and so it became a titling
event! YIPPY! This was Willows first UAD event and we had a BLAST. Dock Jumping is a GREAT way to get your
dogs out and compete...people are friendly and the competition is not so cut throat that it becomes a drag to go to.
Willow did pretty good jumping on average in the low senior division...she had ONE wave where she jumped in the Junior division,
so we did not ear our title that day, but we sure did have a good time trying for it!
21-22 August- There have
not been too many times when showing a dog where I have just been totally shocked and excited...Friday 21 Aug was one of those
days! We had gotten home around midnight from our Dock Jumping competition and I needed to unpack the car and re-pack
the car to go down to Atlanta for the summer cluster at the Jonesboro Expo Center. Wills and I got up at 5 and after
unloading the car, we re-packed it and hit the road (along with new puppies Twiggy and Reid from the Walker x Brier breeding)
around 6:30. We got to the Expo Center in the perfect amount of time to walk puppies, walk Willow, and get dressed and
ready to show. I was a little anxious because I did not see the other two "class females" there were suppose
to show. Fortunatly they breezed in just in time to walk into the ring along with a Multiple Best In Show winning male
"Special" and a Multiple Group winning female "Special." Wills and I showed in the Bred By Exhibitor
class and we got first place beating out one other female. We waited for the Open class to show and then back in the
ring for Winners Bitch class. The Open female is nice, so I was a little nervous, but we won the Winners class!
YIPPY! There was ONE point towards our Championship title! From the Winners class we had to go in for Best Of
Breed against the two "Specials." Around we went and I swear the judge was looking at the other female as
we were gaiting around the ring. You could have probably pushed me over when he pointed at Willow and I as the Best
Of Breed! I had just beaten out a Multiple Best In
Show winning dog! Because I "beat out" the Specials my
little One point win turned into a Three point MAJOR! So Wills and
I started the weekend with 9 points, including two majors and now had 12 of the 15 points needed to earn our Championship! WHAT A GREAT WIN! Saturday there were two more
class females and again, Willow went Winners Bitch for her fourth major (a three pointer) and final points needed to finish
her AKC CHAMPIONSHIP!!!!
March
2009- 11 April Willow and I attended a UKC show outside of Charlotte, NC where she took
home Best Female. She only needed one more "Best Female" win to finish her UKC Championship title! Now
we will work on earning her UKC GRAND Championship title!
February
2009- 28-29 February Willow and I went to the Winston-Salem obedience trial. I have never been to this
venue before. Nice building, but the rally trial was held at 5 PM both days! Well, I know you should
"train for everything" but it is hard to train a dog for not being sleepy when they normally are sleeping!
LOL! Plus, she had JUST come out of season, so she has been living the life of luxury and being down right LAZY!
Needless to day, training was not on our priority list for the past few weeks. So we got two new legs towards our Rally
Advanced Excellent title, but we only finished with placements on Saturday in the Advanced class. But, it is OK as we
now have FIVE of the TEN required legs needed for our RAE title! Nice going Wills! We are going to try to attend a few local trials while I am busy whelping
out pups from Stormy AND Brier! Willow fans...we are thinking of breeding her in Winter 2010. Watch
the "Planned Breedings" link for the latest updates!
January
2009- 3&4 January we went down to the Clemson shows and competed in our first Rally Excellent classes. She
is great and ended up with a second place on Saturday and a third place on Sunday! We plan on attending the three day
Atlanta cluster at the end of the month. Hopefully we can finish up our Rally Excellent title there and start on our
Rally Advanced Excellent title!
30 January- 1 February
We were at the Atlanta, GA cluster of shows. This was my Birthday weekend so I was hoping for some show "gifts!"
:-)Friday Willow earned her Rally Excellent title with a score of 98 and beat out 20+ competitors out of the Rally
Excellent "B" classes! Then went on to the Rally Advanced classes for our first shot of earning our Rally
Advanced Excellent legs and she scored a 93 also beating out 20+ competitors!Saturday she earned a 95 in Rally
Excellent and placed 4th out of 30 plus competitors and a 91 in Advanced. The "BIG WIN" for the day was going
Winners bitch for 2 points and then crossing over and beating the special and going BEST OF BREED for an added point to earn
her SECOND MAJOR! Thank goodness! The "hard part" is out of the way!Sunday let's just say that
our Rally Excellent scores were good enough to Qualify, but not nice enough for me to post! LOL! And our Rally
Advanced scores were a 95- not that we did not do the course lovely...it was just that she decided that she had to SNIFF her
way around the course costing us those precious 5 points and knocking us out of placements! But I am NOT going to complain...a
new title (Rally Excellent), and three legs towards our RAE! Now THAT is a productive weekend! We
have one more trial we hope to go to before she comes into heat and then hopefully I will have to be out on maternity leave
while Stormy has puppies!
******************************************************************************** Willow was
ranked #5 Chesapeake Bay Retriever in 2008
for UKC's final breed rankings!********************************************************************************
December 2008- She did it! We signed up for one day of Rally
at the Winston-Salem, NC show 7 December and Wills earned her Rally Advanced title with a score of 87/100 and
a nice third place win. It is funny how dogs seem to do things they NEVER do in training. We lost several points
to Willow jumping up on my chest as I asked her to "front!" On to Rally Excellent at the shows we will attend in January!
12-14 December- Willow, my good friend Susan D with three month old puppy Parker (a Walker
x Candy puppy) and her other female "Morgen" headed down to Orlando, Fl to a three day show. Thanks Kerrie
T for housing us! What a CRAZY weekend! On Saturday Willow earned her first major- a FOUR pointer- taking the Winner's
class and going Best of Opposite. One major down, one to go!
November 2008- Because Willow doesn't live with me I have not really done too much with her. I do take her occasionally
to an agility class and she does pretty good in it being as though she gets trained so randomly. I was "doodling"
with her one day after doing agility class and she did the skills with such ease...I went home and looked up when the next
Rally trial was going to be in our area. Low and behold, the closing for a trial locally was coming up. So I entered
her with two weeks to train her for all of the skills. That training never really happened. I trained her two
times after agility class and then one time at the local park. With three lessons under our belt, I went into the 8 November Greenville Obedience
Club trial with little hope in really doing well. Willow surprised the daylights out of me when we finished the course
without any bobbles and earned a score of 100 and came in third place only being beaten out by time!
13 & 14 November Willow and I went to the Doberman Pinscher trial and the Monroe Kennel Club shows in Concord,
NC. Wills earned a 96/100 and a third place being beaten out again only by time on Thursday and on Friday earned a 90/100.
She would have earned a 100 had I read the sign properly!
28 & 29 November Willy and I traveled to Savannah, GA to a four day trial. Now this trial was going to be
interesting as it was an outdoor trial and so far all of our training had been indoors. Friday's trial was OK and we
scored an 83/100 and earned third place. She was very interested in the scents and the beautiful lake that had LOTS
of seagulls floating on it! On Friday evening it rained until early Saturday morning so our outdoor venue was pretty
mushy and wet! We sloshed around the ring and squeaked out an 80/100 after Willow veered off course to take a few slurps
of water from a puddle on the course! I was SO disappointed that the last two days of the trial were a wash (literally) as the trial was cancelled due to
torrential rains causing flooding on the show grounds! We will try for our Rally Advanced title at the next show sometime in December!
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