Hot Hot weekend!

It was a very hot weekend for SoCal. Saturday we had an FDDO frisbee competition in Long Beach. It was probably mid 90's or so there so hot but bearable. No freestyle at this competition so we just had the games: Obstacle course where you throw the disc through obstacles and hope the dog can catch it, Speed disc where you get 3 discs and try to hit a box at 15 yds, get a 20 yd throw, and get a 30 yd throw in under 60 seconds, and the final event was distance pyramid where you get 3 throws but only your last throw counts. The FDDO games are a lot of fun.

I only played with Enzo and Jeff played with Tooney and Enzo. I did pretty bad with Enzo in the obstacle course, my timing with him on shorter throws is not there. We finished speed disc and got 3rd in intermediate in that event and I got a big zero in the distance pyramid. Jeff did ok with Tooney and awesome with Enzo. They got 3rd in the obstacle course and 2nd overall!

Sunday we went to an AKC trial in Van Nuys. It ended being over 100 degrees. Way too hot! Jeff ended up coming along so I got some video this time. Not the greatest day to watch agility but it's nice when he goes with me. In JWW, Tooney broke her start and went straight into the wrong end of the tunnel so I just pulled her. It wasn't worth going on and I really needed to do that for a while anyways just didn't want to. Enzo had a really nice run and got 1st place. Here's the video:



It was even hotter when we ran standard. It wasn't too horrible in the shade but in the sun it felt like you were baking. Tooney had a nice run and we got through that difficult line in the back from the dogwalk to the not obvious side of the tunnel. Right before the teeter I took my eye off of her and she didn't come in to the teeter.


Then in Enzo's run I got behind at the chute and he curled in towards me and didn't see the jump. He had already knocked the jump before the chute anyways. I think I said go chute when he was over the jump. At the end I cut the rear cross too tight and he ended up missing the last jump. Unusual for him to not go on but I can see that I got too far ahead before the rear cross and I needed to hang back a little and done a more gradual rear cross. At least his contacts are back to where they were before...Not stopping but going all the way to the bottom.



So the past few weekends haven't been great for Q's but we're still at 608 points for the invitational so far. Still meeting my goal of averaging 300 points/month.

Argh! contacts!

So last weekend Enzo started missing his contacts. We had a run last Saturday where I did a hard push off the aframe and I don't think he liked that. He growled at me and left the aframe a little early. So then the next day he missed his dogwalk contact, flew off the teeter, and took a flying leap off the aframe. So we worked contacts a lot this past week and I was hoping that would help. Nope, yesterday he missed the dogwalk contact and did another flying leap off the side of the aframe. After the aframe I kind of yelled at him like "hey! what are you doing?" and paused for a few seconds. It seems like that may have made an impression as he was really careful on his contacts today and hit all of them. Unfortunately he knocked the triple so no standard Q but I was really happy about his contacts. Last weekend, he only got 1 JWW Q but first place for 40 points. This weekend again only 1 JWW Q for 28 points. Hopefully that doesn't put us too far behind for invitational points. Especially since Labor day weekend we'll be going to the USDAA SW Regional.

Tooney did a flying leap off the dogwalk yesterday so she got a scolding too and made her contact today.

Oh and last weekend Tooney got her 6th double Q for AKC nationals so she's qualified now too!

AKC - Van Nuys 8/1-8/2/2009

So Enzo had another pretty good weekend and got about 100 more points. Enzo got first in Saturday's JWW. Really nice run and nice turns which he ended up running in 6.2 YPS. Tooney knocked the first bar and another one later on. The first bar was because she broke her start. Not sure why the other one did except that I went pretty far lateral to get a front cross in.

Standard was pretty tricky with a zig zag sequence that presented a lot of off course possibilities if you zagged when you should zig. Pretty much had to handle it with a double rear cross which is tough with Enzo because I usually can't get around the jump in time for the second rear. Tooney with her left and right commands got through it smoothly. Enzo on the other hand was really wide on all the turns. At one point he was headed off course and when I called he just stopped for a split second and looked at me like huh? where do I go? He came off the off course chute and finished the course clean. Tooney actually won the class and Enzo came in 3rd place! Tooney hasn't beat Enzo in a while so he really wasted a lot of time there. This really reminds me that I should work on his lefts and rights.

Sunday's JWW, Tooney ended up knocking a bar because I decelerated too much before a wrap and she just landed on top of it. Enzo did the wrap nicely but ended up stumbling in the weaves and skipped a pole. These weaves have a little higher base and he's tripped on them before.

Standard had a pretty tough opening but we had actually practiced almost the exact same thing in class on wednesday. It was two jumps to an 180 turn and then you could either post turn and then push between the two jumps or front cross on the other side of the 180 and wrap to the outside. We timed this in class and enzo did better with the wrap to the outside where he stayed on the same lead so that's what I did. He was a little wider than when we did it in practice but it was smooth. With Tooney I was going to do it the other way because I didn't think she'd let me lead out far enough but she ended up staying long enough and I could do the front cross. Enzo ended up getting 2nd place and Tooney got 3rd. So far Enzo's quick (er..self) release contacts are working. Tooney is doing a running dogwalk in competition now and hitting them most of the time but she may miss them a lot more in USDAA with the shorter contact zone. I prefer that to the really slow dogwalk though.

So another really good weekend for Enzo and Tooney but I really wish I could get Tooney's double Q's for nationals.