Carmen gets some letters!

So to pick up where I left off in yesterday's post, Brutus ended his weekend in lackluster style after I overcooked him in the rally ring.  That left us with not much to cheer about on Saturday, and a lot of time to kill.  You can only shop so much (we came home with lots of new collars and some other goodies), so I thought we'd take a walk to see what else was going on.

Lets go this way.  No I see something good over there, I wanna go that way....

Carmen has tagged along to the last few shows and really impressed me with how well she's handled all the chaos, just taking it all in like a pro.  She's such a smartypants, having learned most of her basic obedience skills (sit, down, stay, come and loose-leash heeling), already and she's just turned 5 months old!  We found that there was a CGC (Canine Good Citizen) test being given at the show so just for kicks I thought I'd see if Carmen could pass.  What did we have to lose at this point?

Test??  Did you just say TEST???

So I walked up to the registration table with Carmen and asked for a test form.  The evaluator asked about the dog I was testing and when I gestured to Carmen she looked at me like I had two heads.  She even had to go ask the other official if there was a minimum age for the CGC test (there isn't), and kind of shrugged her shoulders and handed me a form to fill out.

I warmed up Carmen in the building, hoping that the additional business of other dogs testing wouldn't be too much for her (this sort of thing has been difficult for Brutus to handle sometimes).  But thankfully Carmen shares few personality traits with Brutus and had no problem running thorough all her paces.  During the test she was just as solid and completely floored the examiner.  In fact when she did her stay/recall I even threw an extra little bit of flair and had her finish after the recall (the dog initially sits in front of the handler then on command moves back to heel position).  We actually got a round of applause from the little spectator crowd, and the examiner's jaw literally dropped when she saw what an obedience prodigy that Carmen was!

Hey Carmen, what's that new hardware on your collar?

Needless to say Carmen passed her CGC with flying colors, two days before she turned 5 months old (that has to be some kind of AKC record).  You know I'm not beyond bragging about any of my dogs, but this is REALLY special.  Carmen gets excited anytime she sees the clicker come out (she's learned almost everything via clicker-training), and just LOVES to learn.  I hope she continues to be such an enthusiastic student, amazing me everyday with how smart she is.  It's a joy to have a young mind and clean slate to work with, but a bit of a responsibility too!!   I'm hoping this is only the beginning of a long list of great performances for Carmen

Carmen is officially a Canine Good Citizen!

So with a passing CGC certificate in hand thanks to Carmen, we were able to wrap up our weekend on a high note.  My Frenchies did me proud over the weekend and we had a great time.  We'll never be the most impressive teams in the ring, but like I always say - I love it when we can put a smile on people's faces. 

Yes, you may come and adore me.

So here they are, my little superstars with their official titles (AKC recognitions followed by CPE agility titles in Brutus' case):

Brutus, RA NAJ CGC CL-1 CL2-H

Drama Queen d'Assisi, CGC

Putting all those new letters after our name is hard work, isn't it Carmen?

It's been nice to have some quiet days to relax at home since this week, just letting Brutus & Carmen be dogs and create the kind of ruckus that only two Frenchies can!  After this weekend things will quiet down again for a while, so hopefully I can catch up on blog-reading and commenting while they tear around and wrestle with each other, only pausing to sunbathe or nap gloriously together! Thanks for sticking with us, we'll see you soon!