One person outside the ring offered a suggestion. She thought that I might be confusing Riley with my stand signal and stay hand signal. I cue a stand with my left hand and because this was a problem for us in the past, I cue my stays with my right hand. This strategy eliminated the confusion. We have not practiced Novice exercises in awhile (including stands) so maybe I was getting sloppy. However, thanks to the video, I can confirm that I am still cuing her correctly and that it is quite obvious she is avoiding.
Luckily, the judge excused us from doing sit and down stays. There was no way we would have succeeded so I would not have done them anyway, but it was nice to have the judge's blessing as it is bad manners to just duck out.
So dang it! Greyhound sits are already hard enough. I certainly do not want to cause her any discomfort. Lengthy sit stays are already very difficult for Riley so I am not going to start a fight and insist that she sit stay on a floor she does not even want to sit for 3 seconds on. Unfortunately, most of our obedience trials are held indoors, on concrete, with thin matting. It appears to me that if the matting has any texture at all, she does not like it. Fun, fun.
