Quinn's big weekend

I haven't posted in a while. At the beginning of April I decided to enter Quinn in the Rally trial in Seward, NE. Since then, I've been hard at work on heeling with Quinn. I discovered I had not taught him the go around finish and we needed to practice on that.
Yesterday was Quinn's first time ever in an obedience (Rally) competition. When I saw the map, I realized he would do okay on most of the exercises, but there was a finish right (oh, no!)
So I bought some liver bait--I had forgotten my freshly prepared chicken livers at home and we went to the parking lot to practice a few more times the dreaded 'go-round' finish.
My other big concern with Quinn is he's still somewhat reactive around other dogs. Mostly he barks and acts a fool around dogs that are out of control in his opinion. So using some of the liver bait, I lured him into the building and he did very well ignoring the other dogs and focusing on me. The worst part was there were a lot of Novice A people/dogs around and they did not seem to have their dogs under control at all. I had two people allow there dogs to just wander up to me and Quinn.
Just an FYI for all the Novice A people out there. Even if your dog is nice, not every one else will have a dog that likes to have other dogs in their faces.
We finally got into the ring and went through the exercises pretty quickly. I was happy with his performance. I knew we'd made a few mistakes, but he stayed focused and happy. I was even happier to discover we'd earned a 98 and second place. Alicia said we'd actually taking only 52 seconds to complete the course.
His two mistakes were, 1 point for 'interference' --which means he bumped me or I bumped him. And at one point, for one point, he got out of heel position. I took him outside during Novice A and we missed going in for our ribbons, I was a little disappointed with that.
But for a debut, I was very very pleased.
Today was better on the performance, not as good with overall control in the building. He growled and barked once outside the ring and I had to tell someone quite forcefully to keep their dog away from me and mine.
In the ring he was great! He focused on me and stayed in very good heel position most of the time. The very first sign was a sit and he sat wide. I don't know if I lost his attention or if I didn't give him the correct sit signal. Either way I need to practice that.
That was pretty much the only thing he did wrong. We were one of four teams to earn a 99. I was thrilled to learn we were the fastest team with 50 seconds. Not only did we get a very pretty blue ribbon, but a first place trophy as well. Overall, I don't really care about the placements, but I can't help but be happy when it happens.
The only downer was when we went in to get our ribbons Quinn was really conscious of the other dogs and had a lot of difficulty not lunging after any of them. I kept my hands on him and talked to him and moved him away several times. I also need to work on having people applaud--he did not like that either.