Ring Ready Endurance

[Samba]

For those of you who have shown dogs in obedience numerous times....how do you keep the dogs up for ring performance?

My dogs are green. I showed the Catahoula this past weekend. We showed 3 times in two days. He did really well, but our automatic sits dropped off. We lost only 1.5 points....BUT then two missed sits cost 6 points. Seemed like stress in him to me.

This same thing happened to many dogs. The sits are the first thing to go.

Tried to show my GSD girl. She had shown the weekend before with decent scores in 190s, earning two Open legs. The next weekend.....blah! I pulled her out of the rest of the weekend. Obviously she is not up to two weekends in a row.

I am sure all dogs are different as to how much showing they can withstand. Lack of experience plays in too.

Any insights or ideas? We have the exercises learned...would now like to be able to exhibit better!

[Andaka]

Dogs that are easily stressed need more time to recover. I have seen dogs that could only trial one day in a weekend. You just have to figure out what works for the dog. One weekend a month may be all she can handle. She is a rescue, if I remember correctly.

[EchoGSD]

Yep, every dog is different. I can show my sheltie 2-3 days in a row, even more than once in a day, and she doesn't lag at all. My GSD, however, doesn't like trialing, and has to be kept away from the hubub until right before ringtime. She stresses a bit and then tunes out, resulting in lower scores than I know she is capable of. She's retired from the ring now; I see no reason to take her to trials if she's not having fun. My rottie mix trials very well, but she is older and once NQ'd because I had her entered too late in the day, 2nd day of a long hot weekend, she got tired during the long sit and she went into a down with about 3 seconds left of the exercise.
You just have to learn each dog's "ways" and work within that framework.

[Samba]

Yes, my girl is a rescue and a somewhat sensitive dog. Of course, my last dog was pretty well acclimated to showing after several years. She tended to stress up also. Its been a number of years since I initially brought a dog out to competition...and, of course, different dogs.

Seems they get depleted with the showing pretty easily right now. Giant naps after the ring.

[Dainerra]

I think this is what happened to Singe. The last day he just went AWOL on me. He did have fun, though, and we made sure to end on a happy note. Really, I noticed it on almost all of the dogs that stuck around for the 3rd day. Lots of yawning, more pacing, more blown exercises. It just seemed that NONE of the dogs were with it.

[Chris Wild]

Being still pretty new to AKC and UKC trialing, I don't have any ideas but will be watching this thread for all the great advice I'm sure will be forthcoming.

The responses thus far have me feeling a bit better (and a bit more guilty at the same time) over the glitches Heidi and I had by the time we got to runs 12, 13 and 14 in 2 weeks. I figured just young inexperienced dog who'd had too much asked of her in a short period of time (and it was) but didn't realize how common this sort of thing is. And now I'm feeling more guilty about it. Sure won't do that again. 3-4 runs a day, multiple days in a row was too much for both of us!