The Zim Family Cocker Spaniel Forum

We are having a lot of trouble with the food bowl exercise in L2. Hetty will go and sniff at them, but Ellie is the worst one. She will go and try to excavate the tubs out of the bowl, and she will want to do that with at least 2 of the bowls before I can regain control. And because she's deaf, it's even harder to get her attention to tell her to leave them!! Sometimes we get away with just 'sign not completed correctly' and sometimes we get NQd because of this. She will behave herself when we do it at training, but because the rally people we train with have a slightly different style, they don't often have food in the bowls, and she knows the difference! On Saturday she managed 186 and Hetty got 193, so we got away with it, but I can't afford to drive 3 hours to a trial to get NQd very often. Any ideas??

Food bowls are the reason we we are in agility and not rally.

Congratulations on the great scores! They obviously didn't do too badly in the judges eyes.. and that's what counts!

The only thing you can do is train, train, train! Can you ask them to use food in the bowls at class? Or just work on it at home.

Problem is because the other people don't have food in the bowls, I'd have to remember to take my own smelly sausages, and the other people who are training only the non-food bowls wouldn't be happy at the bowls smelling of sausage after I had my go, unless I always went last. Guess I'll have to pull my finger out before the next trial and practise some at home.