A week after turning six months old, Ellie was entered in her first two rally trials along with her Gramma Besa. Since Besa is working on her Rally Championship we had to be there first thing in the morning for the Master, Excellent and Advanced classes. Ellie’s Novice class was one of the last classes of the day which made for two very long days. Crating wasn’t allowed in the building for this location so the girls spent quite a bit of time waiting in the car which was covered by the heat deflecting drapes.

After Besa completed her runs in each class, I’d put her up and take Ellie inside to sit on my lap and watch all of the activity. She studied each dog as they ran through the courses and we practiced having her focus on me with other dogs, people and distractions pulled at her attention.

When it finally came time for her turn, she confidently accompanied me into the ring, sitting nicely at attention waiting for the start command from the judge and proceeded to perform the various stations beautifully. The first day she came away with a wonderful score of 98 out of the possible 100 which was good enough for first place in the class! She did even better the next day with a 99–and even won the run-off with another dog who also earned a 99 to nab another first place ribbon (placements with tied scores are settled by the fastest time)!

An interesting side note–Ellie’s daddy, Gabe, was also six months old when he had his debut in the Rally ring. Gabe also earned a score of 98, which gave him the second place ribbon in his class. Here is one of Ellie’s runs from her debut weekend in the Rally ring: