Trey’s CDX — FINALLY!

Yesterday, after a long drawn out quest, Trey earned her CDX!!!  Yay!

And she did it with the style and finesse I knew she had in her but was unable to express due to her marshmallow personality. She earned 2nd place in a large 20-or-so Open A class with a 195.0 under judge Diane Allen. It was an awesome day with 11 qualifiers in the class – a very high Q-rate in Open A.  I am SO thrilled to have this title behind us as Trey really doesn’t enjoy obedience (she really hates it) and that took the fun out of it for me, too.

Trey made her first foray into Open A back in May 2010 but NQ’d by going down on the group sit with only 15 seconds to go. Her next attempt was in Sept 2010 in a severe thunderstorm. She is storm-phobic so she followed me out of the ring on the first group exercise (another NQ), but followed that with a 1st place (189.5) the next day for leg #1.

Leg #2 came this past September with another 1st place (and only dog left standing) and a 182.5, but then she NQ’d the Retrieve over the High Jump the next day by going around the jump after picking up the dumbbell.

Yesterday she held it together very nicely and added style and finesse for her best score ever to finish the title!

So we were 50/50 in our attempts to get our title over 18 months. In between Trey had a litter of 8 puppies and managed to be in heat for several shows in which she was entered. And I was also off my feet for over 9 months due to two surgeries during that period. This is the longest it’s taken me to get a CDX, both in time and attempts but I am proud of my little marshmallow. Trey ROCKS!!

So now Trey is officially retired from obedience – a fact we’ve both been looking forward to for a long time. She just needs 2 more points to finish her breed championship and then she will be a herding dog exclusively. She picked up her first duck Intermediate B-course leg a couple of weeks ago. I’m hoping to bring her out in Advanced A-course ducks next summer but let’s not count our ducks before they’re penned!

So now I can focus my obedience energies on Trey’s daughter, Callen, and start getting her ready for Novice – hopefully next spring? We’ll see how it goes, but Callen enjoys playing obedience games with me so that’s a good place to start!

As you can imagine, I am on Cloud 9 right now and also very relieved. I am SO proud of my marshmallow Trey CDX!