Herding with Slayte

I'm finding that herding is actually becoming kind of fun and addictive with Slayte. With Enzo it is frustrating and tiring and we never improved. Slayte still has tons of drive for it but is much more pliable. Funny because in life he is much more headstrong than Enzo. He pushes out and stays out. He is also willing to slow down and use his brain which also gives me time to think. Enzo thinks that going faster is the solution to all problems which makes him a great agility dog but it's bad for herding. It also caused problems with tracking in frisbee but we figured out a way to work around that. When Enzo is in drive mode his brain shuts off. Slayte likes to mix things up when he sees an opening but a lot of that is because of my bad timing and handling since I kept getting stuck against the fence. I feel like I am actually able to learn now and that is a good feeling. I still have a bad habit of walking towards the sheep when I send him around and sometimes I still get stuck in the death spiral but at other times I feel like we are actually doing what we should be! I need to get better at watching both the sheep and my dog and I need to be more proactive about keeping the sheep off of me. It's also nice that Slayte doesn't mind working for someone else.

Slayte has had 6 lessons so far and this video is from our 5th lesson. Now just to figure out how to squeeze in herding lessons around my agility schedule!

Some Agility Videos

We didn't double Q but Enzo had two nice runs so I bought the videos. :) So close though!

Trying Herding Again

Years ago when Enzo was young I had tried taking herding lessons with him for about 6 months or so. We didn't really get anywhere and he just got really wild and started just running in circles and refused to change directions. Tooney got interested and was much less crazy at first but somehow she ended just running in circles too so I stopped trying to herd.

Now Slayte is here so I'm trying to herd again. I'm hoping that maybe I won't mess him up too. I think we are making some progress and I'm starting to get it. Slayte is pretty crazy about it already but he does seem to be more willing to work wider than Enzo is which seems to be making things easier on me. I'm also trying Enzo again. He is still crazy but he will lie down now if I tell him too. Didn't have that before and don't have that with Slayte right now.

Anyways here is video from Slayte's second turn at his second lesson, the first one was pretty wild. This time he worked pretty nice. Enzo only gets one turn because he runs too fast and wears his pads off if he does two turns.



And here is Enzo's turn. Sometimes I feel like I am more of a goalie than a partner with him. haha.

2011 AWI Championships and Crusty Classic Videos

Jenn and I went to the 2011 AWI Championships at Purina Farms in Missouri. We drove the trailer and it turned out to be a real nice trip. We got to have St Louis style bbq, which was also a nice plus.

The event was streamed online so my family was able to watch it live, which was nice. Enzo was the first to go in freestyle and had an awesome round. We followed it up with a great toss/fetch round. Our goal was to make the cut to the finals and Enzo made it! We didn't have a good 2nd round of freestyle, but our goal was accomplished. We had a great time.

Here's our first round of freestyle:



I am not sure when we will travel far for another disc dog competition. This may be it for a while. I'm not opposed to it, but the only thing on the list of "to-do" for disc dog traveling is to go to the Skyhoundz finals in Tennessee. I don't like their freestyle format very much as compared to the other organizations, so it is unlikely I will spring for it any time soon unless there are some kind of very special circumstances.

Here's Enzo in his skeleton costume from the Crusty Classic:



Here's Tooney in her little bee outfit from the Crusty Classic:


Thanks to Jenn for putting the videos up!!! She's the best!

Slayte vs. sheep

We got to try Slayte on sheep after our club's frisbee playday today. It was just like Enzo. At first he barked at them like they were scary and then as soon as they ran from him, the switch went on. He seems to be a little naturally wider working than Enzo but just as crazy. At the end I told him to lie down and he did actually hesitate for a split second!



He also did great at frisbee today. His retrieves were great and his focus was good but we only had one dog at a time in the fenced area so the distractions were at a low level. He also caught a bunch and his tracking skills are awesome.

2011 Crusty Classic

Jenn and I just got back from the 2011 Crusty Classic, which is the California disc dog championship and is dedicated to a former competitor. It was loads of fun and great weather. It was our favorite Crusty Classic to date.

Saturday:
The wind was about 25mph during the toss and fetch round. Enzo was awesome all day and had the highest freestyle score. He ended up in 4th overall because we only got 3 throws in toss/fetch and missed 1 of them. He was running fast and hard but I was throwing all the discs past 50 yards - ie, 10 yards too far. It is a strange situation to feel like you did as good as you could, yet knowing you could have easily done better. Tooney had one of her best freestyle rounds ever and put the highest toss/fetch score up for the day and ended up 2nd place overall! More and more I have learned that toss & fetch is the most important part of the game in terms of winning. Enzo has the best freestyle of the day, yet Tooney ends up placing ahead of him simply by getting 1 more throw off.

Tooney did all of this after cutting her foot last weekend and we weren't sure if she could compete. The last couple of days before the competition she seemed better so we wrapped it up and she showed no ill-effects during the competition. She was also blowin' mud, so she probably wasn't feeling too good. And she just turned 9. Every year I am more and more amazed by how good she is. She won 2 competitions this year (with big turnouts including all the big guns) and gets a 2nd place at our state championships. Wow!

Jenn ended up 2nd overall in the intermediate division with Enzo (the highest level toss-fetch only division). They had 2 great rounds and Jenn had 1 throw at 50 yards!!! I think her 2nd round probably was her best round ever.

Sunday:
The wind was strong all day, probably in the 20mph range. Enzo had a really good round with only a handful of drops. He also had a solid "bulls-eye" score - which is a toss/fetch type of thing. He ended up 3rd overall for the day. Tooney did really well, but in the last round was pretty tired and missed 3 throws that were right inside her mouth and pushed her out of contention. They didn't mention any of the other placements so I don't know where she finished. They handed out another award, which was best overall toss/fetch and Tooney won it!

At the competition, they brought some awards that were not handed out at our USDDN qualifier, so Tooney and Enzo got their awards from that. At the end of the day we ended up with 5 trophies and 1 medal. 3 for Tooney and 3 for Enzo. If I have the breakdown correctly it is:

Tooney: 2 for toss/fetch, 1 for freestyle
Enzo: 2 for freestyle, 1 for toss/fetch

Really proud of the pups. They have been awesome all year and have some big wins. World finals are next weekend. I hope Enzo continues his great run.

Awards, medals, trophies, blah blah blah

We started competing in disc dogs about 7 years ago and were getting awards at the local level pretty quickly. Then after they started cluttering the house and even our cars, I decided to only keep awards from the big regional championships, if we were ever so lucky to earn awards at that level, or if we got super lucky, placements at the national level. I then threw out loads of awards that didn't meet this new standard. A clean start...

The very next year, we start placing regionally. And the year after... and the year after that... so on and so forth. Every award at regional or national level began filling space in the house. My plan was beginning to backfire because the awards at the higher level, as it turns out, are physically much bigger. Go figure. I have a smorgasbord of winnings with something from pretty much every possible placement, division and organization that exists. Plaques, medals, big framed photos, trophies, special production discs, shirts, certificates, etc. Whatever they gave me, I kept it. Anything from the local championships - straight to the trash (or if the organizer would take it, I would immediately give it back to be used at another venue).

Now I sit in a house with these awards all over the place. This weekend we did really well and ended up bringing home 6 more awards. I said to Jenn: "WTF??? This is getting ridiculous. Maybe we should have someone melt all these things down, shape it into a disc and just keep that as the cumulative memento." Jenn just laughed at me.

The real issue is that these awards have no meaning to me. When I see one sitting in some random location in the house in most cases it doesn't spark a memory in most cases. My memories are simply about playing with the dogs.

Interestingly enough, I realize how bad this sounds to most people. It may sound like there is some level of arrogance associated with it, but I feel absolutely no connection to the awards. I can't be faulted for NOT being materialistic can I? I feel fortunate, lucky and blessed to have 2 awesome disc dogs with another currently in training. The only award I really like that I can think of right now is a picture of Tooney and I the SoCal club presented to us. And the reason why - you guessed it - because it's a picture with Tooney. It sparks immediate memories. I pick that up and I know exactly what it is.

I am not sure what to do. Maybe I junk all the regional ones and keep just the nationals? If I still feel they have no value, why should I keep any of them? At the same time, it seems really stupid to throw out national level awards, even to me!

One thing I have not said is that the above feelings are towards the hardware itself. I LOVE the memories I have simply playing with the dogs. They are truly what Jenn and I live for.

I don't care about the awards. At all.

Why am I posting this? Apparently I'm having guilt from the fact that I feel like throwing them all in the trash. Maybe by writing it down and going back and reading it and updating this post as I have new thoughts, it will help. Hopefully Jenn will read this and think about it also and give me some advise. Maybe one day they will all be thrown in the trash and she probably won't even notice for a year or more.

Exhibit A

Proof of Slayte's nuttiness when we first met him. This picture was from the first time that we met the puppies when they were 6 weeks old. Slayte pulled so hard on my pants that he put a hole in them. We had a hard time decided between Slayte and another puppy. The other one was the breeders pick for us and the one in the litter that was the first to do everything. Slayte just seemed to have a little more intensity when we saw him. We left the first time thinking we would take the other one but by the time we went back again we were leaning towards Slayte. The second time we met the puppies we decided on Slayte and this is how I knew it was the right decision. When we were going to take the other I felt bad about not taking Slayte to the point where we were considering taking two. When we decided on Slayte I didn't feel bad at all. When I asked Jeff he said he felt the same so then I knew it was right.

Right now Slayte is passed out after a day at the agility trial which is why I have some time to type. He had tons of fun visting with old friends and making new friends, people and dogs. He's such the social little guy especially when you compare him to Enzo! He gets all wiggly and cute. Enzo crashed a jump in JWW today which was a little strange and scary but he was fine. He ran clean in standard, good running dogwalk course today.

Slayte is doing really well in his puppy agility class. He's been in the foundation class since he was 3.5 months old. He was and still is the youngest in the class but is keeping up just fine. He now knows 180's and 270's with no bars on the jumps. He also does a two jump leadout pretty well. It's not 100% but he's pretty good. Starting to do around the clock jumps and me standing a little lateral from the jump. We've been working the end of the teeter. Trying to get him to hop on from the side drive into a down at the end with his head facing forward. The teeter drops about 6 inches right now. I've also just started having him run on a flat board to a Manners Minder. I'm just using a 2'x4' piece of plywood right now because that's what I had lying around. I also figure it doesn't look quite like any piece of equipment so if I screw something up right now it won't matter too much. I am also working on the PVC box with him. I've only done a couple of sessions just shaping him to get in the box. He did the tire for the first time on Thursday. At first he was a little confused and was actually trying to push off of the tire but after several tries he was sending to the tire and wrapping back to me. Oh and the table, we started working table in class and we are walking past the table and just having them stop. We've been working downs on the flat a lot but I haven't really asked for it on the table but he started offering downs when I went past the table! really cool!

oh well, he's awake and barking at me again so no more blogging!

Losing Mindy

A couple of weeks ago Jenn came home from puppy agility class with Slayte and started making the dogs dinner. She asked where Mindy (our 13 year old forgotten dog) was and I didn't know but said she was fine earlier. Mindy is deaf and doesn't really like us so she's sort of just a resident at the house. It's like if you put an ad out to rent a room to somebody and some random person responds. The only difference is Mindy doesn't pay us and we have to feed her because if we didn't, it would be inhumane. Anyways, she was nowhere to be found. Jenn goes outside and I left the side gate wide open. DOH! I felt really bad and stupid. I cut the grass in the back yard and I didn't close the gate. I can't believe I did that...

The search was on, but it was almost dark out. I jumped on my bike and started biking around the neighborhood. Jenn took a walk around the block and came back and jumped in the car. We both got reports that people saw her, but we found no trace of her. Since she was half deaf, calling "Miiinnnnddddy" was probably a total waste of time, but what else can you do? I rode the bike for about an hour or two, I forget now. My ass and arms and everything were hurting and I was totally exhausted so I came back, dropped the bike off and got in our other car. Continued driving around for about another 15 minutes or so. At this time it was around 10PM and we decided to come back and print out flyers, assuming she was probably already "gone". Of course the printer won't work. We fought with it a while then gave up after getting 2 test sheets printed, figuring 2 is better than 0. We put 1 up then went to the other side of the neighborhood and put the other up. As we were walking back, I saw people standing around with some dogs. One of them was Mindy! We found her. People were holding her and were going to walk her around the neighborhood to see if she recognized her home. After we put a leash on her, she led the way home. We really don't think she was lost. We think when we got her she said "ok, you got me... the fun is over". We had reports of people seeing her on every road but ours. It's pretty clear she knew where home was and just didn't want to go back.

Yes, she just takes up space here, but I'm glad we found her. I would have felt bad if we found a pile of brown fur the next day on the road somewhere. It would have been sad.

Lgggggggggggggggg

Slayte (ie LG/little guy) is nuts. That is really my only point to this post. I think that is why Jenn has abandoned this blog - Slayte has destroyed what has made us human. OK, it's not that bad, but you get the idea.

We got what we asked for I guess. When we went to check out the puppies, this one particular puppy was pretty much insane. Non-stop bonkers. Biting everything, untying our shoes by pulling on the laces, tripping us by grabbing our pant leg as we walked by, chewing on Jenn's hair, overall just being a nightmare. This 1 puppy had red lights flashing, signs saying "keep away" and horns blaring "danger, danger". Well, that turned out to be the one we chose, Slayte.

Fast forward 4 months. Slayte now decides to harass us at 1AM-4AM by standing on us in bed, barking at us, barking at Tooney, destroying our laundry baskets (which have been moved to the hallway), destroying the bed, squeaking toys, etc. Hours of play time before bed is clearly not enough for him. Jenn and I have a lot of energy and really can pour a lot of time into the puppy (we have no lives outside the dogs, so the dogs is what we do), but he's wearing us out. Jenn says her arms and legs feel rubbery all the time now. I hurt all over. We tug, play Frisbee, teach tricks, obedience, agility fundamentals, etc from about 5PM until 10 or 11PM. I'm not even including the play time he gets during the day chasing Tooney and driving me nuts while I try to work. 5-6 hours straight before bed!!! When I say straight I mean it. It is non-stop playing. Jenn plays with him, I play with him, he chases Tooney around. We try to take a break - he won't let us - he stares at us and barks non-stop and we give in to it and tug or play Frisbee or whatever for another 30-45 minutes. It's just a non-stop cycle. Our only short breaks are when he chases Tooney around for a bit. It probably only lasts 5 minutes.

He also destroys anything cardboard or paper related in the house. It makes our house a total mess with tiny shreds of the stuff all over the place.

He has learned so much because of his endless energy. I'm running out of things I can teach him because he's not old enough to do the more physically demanding stuff. He knows pretty much all the basic Frisbee moves that there are: left, right, through, on, scoot, over, around, circle, dog catch, blah blah blah.

Would I change anything??? NOOOOOOOO! I would take a puppy like this any day. He's a total blast and is everything we really wanted. I wouldn't even want a dog with slightly less energy or slightly less drive. Heck I'd even be happy if he were even more bonkers (not sure that is even possible). We love him and are so happy he is this way, even though he acts as if he's taking crack with a speed chaser constantly! It's just difficult on us physically.

Slayte 2011 USDDN videos

Jenn put together Slayte's videos from USDDN. He had a good time. He kept trying to get away from the sun. In 1 round you can see him actually run to the shade. In another round, he keeps trying to veer off to the side, but I manged to bring him back in. Thanks to Jenn for cutting out the part where I threw from the wrong line.

He's a cute little guy, isn't he? How great for a puppy only 6 months old. So impressive. Tracking skills are awesome so far. He just need to get a bit better at timing the catches. When we do short throws, he tends to catch the disc deep in his mouth (a good thing), but on longer throws, it tends to be caught barely by the rim of the disc. He will get better with time I'm sure.

2011 USDDN Southwest Nationals

Our regional USDDN competition was this past weekend. The weather was almost perfect. around 80 for a high with moderate wind. The divisions are Super Open (freestyle + toss and catch) and Super Pro (toss/fetch). It's a qualifier for the International finals in Georgia. The top 5 in each division qualifies.

Super Open (freestyle + toss/fetch):

Every year Enzo has competed in the Super Open division, he has qualified and this year was no different. He earned a 4th place finish. The first round for us was pretty rough, having a bad routine per Enzo's standards. We had the highest toss/fetch score in the division at 19.5. Enzo's second freestyle round was awesome and we finished 4th overall!

On Enzo's next to last T/F throw, he caught a disc at 40 yards and was under 10 seconds left. That's nearly impossible to get the disc back and get another throw off. I was calling him back as best as I could and he sprinted to me. He dropped the disc right in front of me and I picked it up with 1 second left and threw another 40 yard bomb for a beautiful catch. The disc wasn't in my hand for even a half second. That was exciting! Although certainly not the highest score I've had with Enzo , I told Jenn after the round it was the best communication and flow I've ever had with him in T/F. It was a thing of beauty.

Tooney didn't compete in Super Open this year because it was too much for her to do with all the rounds that would have been required. Enzo had 5 rounds. I felt she'd be better suited to just do the Super Pro division, figuring she had a chance to win it.

Super Pro (toss/fetch only):

Enzo had 2 solid rounds, but I wasn't throwing my best for him.

Tooney, as usual, was great in her 2.5 rounds of t/f. She had a .5 round because there was a timer malfunction so we had to redo our round. It turned out good because I ended up with a better score the 2nd time, although Tooney was more tired and I only got 5 throws for the redo. She caught all of them, though, for 19 points. It put her in 3rd place after the 1st round. The 2nd real round was really good because I got 6 throws off for 20 points. Tooney was running really fast and looked beautiful out there. We have some videos that will be put up some time. Freestyle may be more exciting to watch, but when you see a toss/fetch round with a dog like Tooney it's really worth watching. Tooney scored 39 points in her 2 rounds and finished 2nd place with another qualifier!

Enzo is qualified for AKC Nationals!

Enzo got his 6th Double Q for AKC Nationals last Friday! I got some videos from the weekend too. The JWW course was kind of tricky and he jumped big on my double front cross but that was not exactly unexpected. I felt like that was the safer handling strategy though. He Q'd so it worked out.



I decided that the best way to ensure that I got the correct end of the tunnel after the dogwalk was to do a front cross. I had to leave the weaves and then run like crazy! I got there but just barely. Poor Enzo did a face plant but he didn't seem to care. Got first place on this run :)



Then Saturday we did frisbee which Jeff already talked about and Sunday Enzo and I went back to agility. Enzo got first place in JWW on another twisty sort of course. He kind of launched over jump 3 but the rest was pretty tight.



Sunday's standard was a nice flowy course. Enzo had a really good run except for the part where he thought he should do a running table! That's the second time he's done that in the past two weeks so we worked it some in class on Monday.



Slayte is doing really well. He's a really fun pup and follows me around everywhere. He was 26 lbs and around 17.5" at last measurement. All of his baby teeth are out and he is tugging like a maniac now. Hopefully we can use that to improve his speed on retrieves. Pulls like a sled dog on leash so had to use the Easy Walk Harness on him. He did go through a little fear period but seems to be coming out of it now. He was acting a little shy with people for a week or two but now he seems to be all over people again. He still wants to bark at dogs that he sees at a distance but he is ok when they are close. Definitely much better than Enzo at this age. Not even a comparison really. He's also incredibly smart and figures out things that we really don't want him to (like stepping on the garbage can pedal to open it!).

Tooney does it again

Tooney won another disc dog competition this weekend. The competition had 3 games: hopscotch, pie plate and speed disc. Hopscotch is set up just like the kid's game, but with squares 10'x10' starting at 10 yards away. You get 3 attempts per square and need to hit them in order from 1-8 and there is no time limit. After 3 misses at a given square, you are done and the highest # you got is your score. This is the hardest game for sure. Pie plate was a circular shaped set of targets at about 20 yards. A bit confusing to describe, but you basically try to hit the target zones in order, 1-7. In speed disc, you hit a square target at 15 yards and then get 1 throw at 20 yards and 1 throw at 30 yards. Once you finish the 3 targets, that is your time. Maximum of 60 seconds.

The turnout for this competition seemed to be really huge. It felt like 100 teams showed up, but probably more like 50. I will see when the results are posted exactly how many there were. We had 2 fields running at the same time and it took several hours to finish.

Last year, I told somebody it was impossible to hit all 8 targest in hopscotch. He said he could do it. I offered him $100 bet and he turned it down. He was the only person that hit all 8 targets last year (wishes he took the bet). This year, 2 people hit all 8 targets and the tie breaker is the one with the fewest throws. That was Tooney! We did it in 14 throws. The other team did it in 20 throws. Out of 50+ teams, only 2 finished it. It's not easy! I only got to 3 squares with Enzo and Jenn got 0 with him!

Tooney had solid numbers in pie plate and speed disc and ended up winning the competition!

Enzo had a blast, but this is not his sort of thing. He launches himself over the targets in every direction imaginable. I have given up trying to come up with a strategy with him for these types of events because I just get frustrated and it's not worth it. Every strategy I try fails for one reason or another. I just throw the discs and let him have fun flinging his body all over the place, making super easy catches look extremely, incredibly difficult. It's OK. He enjoys it and we enjoy watching him have fun. These same discs Enzo misses by a mile or launches himself 10' past the target, Tooney catches in the center of the target without any effort it seems.

Slayte earned his first points in a competition with points in every event! He even caught a disc at 29 yards on speed disc. We got a lot of compliments about him. His catching and tracking ability is phenomenal for a 5 1/2 month puppy.

Jenn got to play with Enzo in all the events and played hopscotch with Tooney. She had a really good round in hopscotch with Tooney, finishing half of the course (very few people got that far). She had similar experiences with Enzo as I did. Everything seemed to not work for every reason imaginable. These games are not ideal for dogs that do not understand the idea of slowing down or exercising a bit of restraint.

Slayte getting better, Tooney is cute, Enzo is fast

Slayte has shown a lot of improvement in his disc skills. This post is to talk about his "graduation" and how I see his outlook at 5 months. He has graduated from doing mostly rollers to doing mostly throws now. He's only 5 months old but is showing great tracking skills and a strong interest to jump. I'm trying to keep the disc in a place where he doesn't need to jump, but there's always variations in the throws and sometimes he has to jump. When he does, he looks real good. I think he's going to be a dog that can catch anything - which is the 1 quality Enzo doesn't have. I started throwing forehands, overhands, thumbers, etc yesterday for the first time and he caught them just like any other disc. I'm really stoked.

It is pretty clear to me that he is not going to be the pure athlete that Enzo is. If Enzo's a 10 on the athletic scale, Slayte right now looks like a 7. However, Slayte is a 10 with intelligence and is showing tremendous ability to catch discs that Enzo wouldn't even be close to at that age. Heck, he's catching discs I'm not sure Enzo could catch now! I think Slayte is going to be more successful than Enzo as a disc dog. I almost can't believe I'm saying that because Enzo is my pride and joy and he has that something special that very few disc dogs have that I can't put into words. The only way I can describe it is by demonstration - with Enzo standing still right in front of me, I toss a disc 2' in the air right in front of me and Enzo jumps up 5' in the air, landing 10' away from me in a fraction of a second. 99% of dogs would turn their head and just catch the disc without hardly moving... not Enzo, he's going to do everything with the absolute most effort and intensity possible. But in terms of disc talent, Slayte is progressing significantly faster than Enzo did and is showing me things I have never seen in Enzo. I think he will be somewhere between Tooney and Enzo. He will have more jumping ability and speed than Tooney but will have her tracking and catching ability. Maybe it will be the perfect mix, because I think it has significant potential to being the exact mix required to be a great disc dog.

Honorable mention to Tooney for being cute and Enzo for being supa fast.

Slayte's first competition and Enzo is forced to do agility.

I ran Enzo in an ASCA agility trial this past weekend while Jeff judged a local UFO and played Toss and Fetch with Tooney and Slayte. I'm sure Enzo would rather do Frisbee but what he doesn't know won't hurt him and I would really like to qualify for ASCA Finals in 2012 since they are in Bakersfield. He has a blast running those ASCA courses though. He ended getting 2.5 Q's in standard and 4 Q's in jumpers. He broke his speed record and ran one jumpers course in 7.00 YPS! He also had one standard course that was almost 6 YPS. He has a total of 9 points towards finals now. I think the half Q's don't count towards that.

Jeff played with Slayte at his first ever competition and he did awesome. Really happy with how his retrieve looked. He's a lot slower coming back when we play at home. I believe that he's still struggling with whether he should bring it back or run off with it at home. He also didn't seem to mind the sun and at home he often wants shade. Anyways here's the video!



oh and latest measurement was 17" and weight was 25 lbs.

Slayte catches first disc!

The little guy, AKA LG, has caught his first disc at 4.5 months old. Very proud of him. I have not given him very many discs in the air - almost all rollers. As a matter of fact, I think I only gave him discs in flight 1 other session. I was able to tell at that time he was still too young. I told Jenn this past week that he is going to catch discs soon. In our previous session, I didn't even think of throwing one for him. Just slipped my mind. Today I went out and towards the end of the session decided to throw one. He missed the 1st one but jumped for it. I threw another - jumped for it and missed. I got him all wound up and made a perfect throw and he caught it! It was very cute. He was tired and as soon as he caught it, he ran to the shade and sat there with his trophy.

Very good! He won't be seeing a lot of discs in the air right now, but it's good to see he caught one so early. I will probably give him 2-3 throws at the end or middle of a session just to keep him familiar with the flying disc, but for the most part, everything will be on the ground as I want to focus on fundamentals and basic skills.

He is already an expert at 'around' and 'circle' (the opposite of 'around'). He learned how to go around after just 1 session. He's a scary-smart dog. If he channels that intelligence and is able to focus it... LOOK OUT!

Slayte-Chia Pet

Slayte is growing fast. He's going to be bigger than Enzo. Probably 8-10lb.

He is a little monster and in some ways worse than ever. He bites everything constantly. He is in constant motion and rarely sleeps it seems. He has more energy than Enzo and Tooney put together at that age. He has more energy than Jenn and I along with the other dogs all put together. It's kind of scary. Tooney was super hyper at that age, but would run for 15 minutes then sleep 2 hours. This little guy runs for hours and hours and hours on end. Will not stop.

He's starting to retrieve discs and loves to chase rollers. We spend most of our training doing restrained recalls and doing some lefts, rights, sits, etc.

He is absolutely wearing me out. My shoulder hurts from tugging and restraining him on recalls. I hope he gets the focus he needs to harness that energy.

Smart puppy

Sometimes Slayte does some things that are kind of scary smart for a little pup that is not quite 4 months old. Yesterday we took him by himself to the school that is in our neighborhood to play. He pulled the whole way there like he knew where he was going but that is pretty straightforward. On the way home, he was pulling again and passed up the first street and then turned right up our street. Once he got on our street he started scanning, looking to the side and sniffing the ground on occasion but still pulling forward. Once he got to our house he pulled hard and right up the driveway with no hestation at all. He's only been over to the school maybe 4 or 5 times total and always with another dog before!

He weighed around 22 lbs yesterday and roughly 15.5"; tall at 16.5 weeks. Enzo was 16 lbs at 17 weeks according to the vet reciept that I found yesterday so Slayte is definitely bigger.

Oh and here's a video from last weekend. Enzo really rocked the dogwalk contact. He's been leaping a lot when I practice in the backyard but does good in competition and mostly good in class. Right now he seeems to do better if I hang back a bit. Before he did better if I ran hard and ahead. Go figure.

Skyhoundz Regionals and Quad Pawed event

This weekend was one of our biggest competitions of the year. Saturday was the qualifier and Sunday was a disc dogathon equivalent competition with 4 different events (without freestyle).

The best news is that Tooney had 2 rounds of toss/fetch, 1 round each of freestyle, time trial, spot landing and bullseye and did great and seems to be showing no problems from all of the work and was running strong to the very end. Her injury seems to be cured and her stamina is almost 100%.

Saturday started with Tooney freestyle. She did good and I felt fine (at the time). Enzo did really good all weekend for both Jenn and I. Saturday he did very good in his freestyle round and only had 1 drop... HOWEVER I dropped 2 discs during my 2 most difficult throws. I didn't think much of it but I came off the field thinking it must have been because my hand was cold (it was windy and cold all weekend). I normally never fumble those moves. I had my toss/fetch round with Tooney next and I threw discs all over the place with most being out of bounds. It was strange. Things were getting worse with my coordination. I haven't thrown a disc out of bounds in several years. Then I went out with Enzo's toss and fetch and I shanked a disc waaaaay out of bounds. I never do that!!! I came off the field and at that time I knew there was something wrong with me but I wasn't sure what it was. Adrenaline may have been masking the real problem... Enzo had made the cut in freestyle, but I was starting to feel progressively worse. Very tired, almost sleepy, with no energy and super weak. My stomach wasn't feeling very good. I wasn't really hungry all day and just had some snacks. The night before, I wasn't very hungry and had only a yogurt and banana for dinner. I did not feel like going out for my 2nd round of freestyle, but I fought through it, then I was just completely toast. We went home and I forced down some dinner despite not being hungry at all. Me not being hungry at any time for any reason is usually a bad sign. Now it's been 2 days of no appetite. Honestly, I have no idea what the problem was, but I felt really horrible. I didn't sleep very good that night, either, but Sunday morning I woke up and felt GREAT. The mysterious illness was gone. (FYI, Sunday night I ate like a pig)

On Sunday, the wind was WAAAAAY worse and probably 70+ competitors. However, I felt normal and was able to throw like I should. For Enzo's toss/fetch round he had cross-wind that was absolutely ferocious (30mph?). I knew there was a chance for 0 points. Wind never intimidates me - I throw for 40 yards and don't care about throwing everything out of bounds. Never will anybody see me throw 20's or 30's just to get some points and be conservative. Fuck that, I'm not a ho. The dogs and I have fun with the long throws, so that's what I do. I was in some kind of "zone" because I threw all 4 discs right in the 5 point zone (40+ yards) and Enzo blew away the competition with 21.5 points. It was some of the loudest cheering I've ever heard, I couldn't believe it. That was his best Skyhoundz toss/fetch score ever. He did good in the time trial event also, but as usual struggled in the spot-landing as I simply have not figured out a strategy with him yet despite doing it quite a few times over the years. This year they changed the rules slightly so it made things nearly impossible for Enzo's jumping style to get points.

With what is becoming a habit, Enzo's toss/fetch was truly amazing to watch. So exciting! Work on your weaknesses. With time and dedication, they can become a strength. I never imagined Enzo would be one of the top toss/fetch dogs around, but I am loving it now!

A little Slayte update and videos from AWI Qualifier

Slayte is growing some legs!   He's a little high in the rear right now.  Still crazy and quite a handful.  He's definitely not as biddable as Tooney and Enzo as puppies but has way more drive than they did at this age.  Some things he picks up amazingly fast and other things he's just not that interested in doing.  He's doing well in puppy agility with the foundation stuff.  Still not super food motivated so I have to try lots of different kinds of treats.  He tugs really well though so that's good.   He's also finally starting to retrieve a little.  Funny that when we tested the puppies he was the only one to retrieve to hand but then when we got him home he just wanted to run off with the toys.   He loves doing restrained recall to a toy.  Well the recall part anyways.  He's not so big on the restraint part.  barks and bites at us.  lemme go lemme go.  lol.  He likes chasing rollers now but we really need to work the retrieve more.   So far he's really friendly with people and seems to like most dogs.

Here's the videos from the AWI qualifier that Enzo won! Finally! Tooney did pretty good too. oh and Jeff too!

Enzo's Round 1 Freestyle


Tooney's Freestyle


Enzo's Round 2 Freestyle



Tooney's Toss and Fetch

Managing canine athletes

If you do sports on a regular basis with your dogs, it's very important to regulate their activity levels during training and competitions. Know their limits and be smart about what you let them do. A perfect example is Tooney at our AWI qualifier this year. She had a good freestyle round and a great toss/fetch. It put her around 7th place overall and in the top 10 for toss/fetch, too... She made the cut for 2nd round in both freestyle and toss/fetch. That is all well and good, but I know that after Tooney's injury last year and her physical abilities that doing 2 more rounds would be too much. Could she do it? Yes. Would it be risky? In my mind it was. Even if she didn't get hurt, it would very likely wear her down a lot and she would then end up running her last round probably feeling like I was forcing or pushing her to. Unfortunately, at every competition I see people who should make this same decision but they don't. They go out there and in the last round, the dog doesn't want to compete, walks off the field, etc. It's supposed to be fun. If your dog is leaving the field or showing ANY indication they don't want to play, then you aren't listening to them and you're forcing them to do something they don't want to do. How do you think that will pan out in the long run?

Jenn and I asked if we could see the scores in the freestyle to see how far from making the top 5 qualifying spots she was. We decided if we felt she could move up a couple of spots that it would be worth it to do the freestyle and scratch the toss/fetch round. She had to pass 2 dogs that would certainly get much higher freestyle scores than her. She was close to them only on the strength of her toss/fetch round. We scratched her from freestyle and continued with her in the toss/fetch round. It was a pretty smart decision because she was only 1 point out of making the top 3 in the toss/fetch. She ended up 4th place, so that was great!

By doing this and making the decision ahead of time, it allowed the organizers to have the next highest scoring team that didn't make the cut originally to make the cut after our decision.

I am super proud of her as she had a great day. It's not very often you will see a competitor scratch a dog from the freestyle round simply because they felt it would be too much for their dog, but it goes to show how much we love the little T-bean and we try to do what is best for her.

Enzo wins AWI SoCal

Enzo won the 2011 AWI Southern California qualifier! Very proud of him! Tooney was probably near placing in the toss/fetch portion of the event, but I didn't see the final placements yet.

We also competed in a UFO major 2 weeks ago and did OK. We didn't place, but Enzo and Tooney had lots of fun.

Sydney

11/23/1997 - 5/3/2011

We already miss you, Beeb.

Enzo turns 5!

We missed Enzo's 5th birthday yesterday. He's my best little buddy in the whole world and we forgot it. We totally suck balls. Sorry little boy.

Behind!!

So not much energy or time for computer stuff with Slayte in the house. I have all kinds of videos on the camera right now. AKC Nationals and a bunch of frisbee videos. Dunno when I'll get to posting them! Starting to teach Slayte a few things. He's not real into his dog food so it's hard to get him to work for it much. I don't want to fill him up on treats. Luckily he's smart and picks up on things pretty quickly. He'll offer sit and down but haven't gotten to the point where I want to put it on cue. Working on Leave It or it's yer choice or whatever you want to call it. Have him getting on the balance disc and on the little travel board. He learned the tunnel by watching the other dogs. I just taught him to do it when I ask yesterday which was pretty easy. He's a funny little guy. He loves toys and tugging but his attention span isn't very good. He will chase rollers with the puppy discs but he won't pick up the plastic discs. He does fast restrained recalls to food and toys. Oh and he's growing like a weed! I think my next project will be to clicker train a retrieve.

Seems like he might turn out friendlier than Enzo but I guess that time will tell on that one.

Introducing Slayte!

Love this pup! He's bonkers but lots of fun and super sweet. Lots of toy drive and tons of energy! Hard to keep up with him. Only bad thing is he screams at night in his crate so not getting much sleep.

AKC Nationals Part 2

Saturday's JWW was a really tough course for Enzo. Fast lines with lots of off course opportunities. Basically had to make sure to use a lot of deceleration cues so couldn't let him run all out. It was quite scary to run him on that course and he was turning wide and looking at everything. We made it through clean though! yay! I think he ended up around 25th place. Then I ran Tooney and she did really well but unfortunate I used too much deceleration for her in one part where there was an off course tunnel option and she knocked a bar. Basically I handled her like Enzo. Ergh.

Standard was another kind of icky course. It had a horrible dogwalk exit for running dogwalks. Basically there were 3 jumps next to each other and they had to take the middle jump and not the one straight ahead. For Enzo I decided to do a front cross at the end of the dogwalk and then a rear cross on the next jump. I figured that was the only way to make sure that he didn't take that off course jump. If I pulled him, I figured it would be 50/50 whether that would work or not. He broke his startline so I was a little late on the front cross and he almost flipped into the tunnel next to the dogwalk but other than that we got through that part. Then he was flying towards the teeter so I yelled wait at him as he neared the end and he did! Good boy! I rear crossed the next jump and he didn't read a tight enough turn to the chute and I lost him to an off course jump. I really wish I had that course back again... If I had said something to him sooner I could have easily saved that.

Then Tooney ran the standard course and ran clean. I easily pulled her off the dogwalk and she was with me through the whole course. She ended up around 20th I think.

So Hybrid with Enzo was my last chance to maybe make Challengers round. The course was really a good course for him. One where he could keep a lot of speed. He had an awesome opening and then probably lost around 1 second when he shot off in the wrong direction. He still had a pretty good time so I had to wait and see if it was good enough to make the Challengers round.

Tooney had a really solid Hybrid Round. I didn't have any expectations for Tooney this nationals. I was just really happy that she could run again and didn't want to push her too hard or anything. I was really happy to see that she actually would have made finals if not for that darn bar! We took her shopping after her run which she really loves.

So Enzo ended up 13th in Hybrid so not high enough to make it to challengers. But still a pretty good placement especially considered the lost time. Too bad since that Challenges course looked like it would have been fun to run with him. Finally a dogwalk exit that didn't want to make my head explode. Ha!

Good thing is that Enzo's running contacts really help up well this weekend. They seem to actually be becoming solid! amazing! Over the next year I'll be able to learn more about how to handle his contacts and what works and what doesn't and we should be more prepared for the next Nationals. Maybe if I hadn't been obsessing over the dogwalk in Standard I would have noticed that off course option.

Well one more week and we'll be home with Slayte! Skyhoundz Southeast Regional this weekend. Just for fun since we aren't from the southeast.

AKC Nationals Recap Part 1

Video will come later after we get home from our cross country trip. We left our house last Monday to drive cross country to Lexington. Monday we stopped by the Hawley's place in AZ to make our final decision on our puppy. After our first trip out we really liked two of the puppies. I thought it would be a difficult decision which one but in the end, we just knew which one was the "right" one for us. We came to the realization in about 15 minutes this time. So the puppy formally known as Frost, now Slayte, will be coming home with us at the end of our trip. We had a great time chatting with the Hawley's for the rest of that evening and got to hug and play with our puppy a little.



So then we spent Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday driving, and driving and driving with our trailer. Enzo was pretty good Monday and Tuesday but then Wednesday he just had enough. Started whining and screaming at us. We let him play a little frisbee at some of our stops and that helped a little. He was starting to get a pretty crazed looked on his face.



We arrived in Lexington aroung 7pm on Thursday and we were all very happy to be done with driving for a few days!

Friday was the State Team Tournament which is mostly just for practice. I didn't really have great runs with either dogs but they were both just really happy to be running and quite excited! Enzo's running contacts looked good so that was reassuring but his running teeter flyoff was not! I marked it with a hey! and made him pause for a second, was just really hoping to make some kind of impresssion on him! I couldn't tell at the time if he cared or not. Tooney looked great in both her runs but for some reason Friday is a blur and I don't really remember much of anything else about it right now!

I think that's enough typing for now so more later!

Greg Mauldin Memorial TriDogathon 2011

This disc dog event is dedicated to Greg Mauldin who(m?) we lost several years ago in a motorcycle accident. We knew him, but not very well. He was an avid disc dogger and was in our first disc dog class.

The competition consists of 3 events. Toss/fetch, obstacle course and bullseye. It was a huge turnout, 60 entries! After the toss/fetch and obstacle course, I thought Enzo was probably in 1st place as he had a great toss/fetch and a solid obstacle course. Unfortunately, I got hosed on the bullseye with a huge change in wind. It got way stronger and completely changed direction. I didn't adjust in time and he got a low score. I figured that took him out of it. Tooney, on the other hand, had a decent toss/fetch and a solid obstacle course going into the final round of bullseye. In bullseye, she had a great round. We left early figuring both dogs did pretty good, but not enough to win and we had to get the trailer for our big trip.

I got an email of the results. They gave out awards to the winners of each of the 3 individual events and the overall combined winner. Tooney won! She also was only 0.5 points away from winning the bullseye. Enzo, on the other hand, won the toss/fetch event! It was a difficult toss/fetch as the field was configured to only allow to throw in 1 direction and it was into a head wind. With no bonus zone and a narrowing field (only 10 yards wide at 40 yards), it was risky for me to throw 40 yeards, but I did and it was worth it. He had 17 points, which is awesome for no bonus zone and the narrow field with out-of-bounds!

One interesting point is that there were a total of 8 catches in the entire toss/fetch event at 40 yards and I accounted for 4 of those (Enzo 3, Tooney 1). There were probably over 300 total throws, so it was a nice accomplisment. I rarely feel proud of myself, but this time I am. It wasn't easy and it shows I'm a pretty good thrower! Instead of always giving the dogs the credit for any success we have, I'll take some credit this time. I'm awesome. HAHA!

We are at AKC nationals with Enzo having an outside shot at making the finals. Jenn will post an update on that with videos some time after we get back.

2011 Las Vegas UFO

The disc dog season is continuing with Enzo on a roll! He won the 2011 Las Vegas UFO competition and should also be at the top of the UFO standings for a while now, with a perfect score of 40 so far. We drove there early in the morning, competed, then drove back late after the competition. Long day, but it was worth it. Tooney got to play again and had fun. Jenn got to play with Enzo again and it was pretty funny in their first round. The disc was going all over the place because Jenn didn't warm up, but Enzo gladly caught them all and paused to peer into the audience to look at all of the people dressed in yellow (that looked like me)! He was completely confused. Yellow is my color of course, but it also the Las Vegas group's color (Atomic Dogs). See their club photo:



Enzo had a great toss/fetch round and was PERFECT. He is making toss/fetch look EASY. I think he had the highest toss/fetch score of the day around 15.5 probably. He also had the highest freestyle score of the day.

Jenn and I have made a general decision with all of the dogs that it will always be in the best interest of the dog's development to do things that will give them a chance to learn and be their best, whether it's disc, agility or anything else they do. For disc, this means to throw in such a way that would give them the best opportunity for the most possible points. I prefer to throw nice floaters at 40 yards that any dog should be able to catch. With some wind conditions, this type of throw is impossible. Based on wind conditions, don't throw the conservative method where your best chances are 10 points if you are perfect, throw so that your best chances are 20 if you are perfect. It may be a higher risk situation because we are likely throwing in such a way that is more challenging for the dog to catch. Whether or not they are successful in terms of catching, they are successful in terms of experience and the dogs always enjoy a challenge.

With that said, wind during the toss/fetch round was not very good for Enzo, being a left-to-right wind. Strong left-to-right or strong tail winds are were his nemesis, which happens to be the preferred way to throw for a right-handed thrower such as myself. It pushes the disc down making it fly like a line-drive instead of a nice floating throw. I could have potentially thrown from the opposite side, but then there are a whole host of problems from the thrower's standpoint - mainly with the disc being pulled way off course to the left if putting too much hyzer on the disc or by doing a nose dive into the ground if putting too much anhyzer on the disc. Basically, I would need to throw much better if I throw from the right-to-left cross wind side. I CAN throw good in those conditions, but if I throw from the left-to-right cross wind side, I WILL throw good and Enzo will have a chance for a big score.

When the disc is at 4-6' in the air at 40 yards, Enzo has a tendancy to blow past the disc by running right under it without any reaction or he will mis-time his jump. We've seen this over and over again. I have had so many 0's in toss/fetch because of this I can't even tell you. However, I keep going out and giving him the chance to learn. It has turned out to be a great decision because I rarely ever see him make these mistakes. He is adjusting his stride and has great timing with almost every throw, even in practice.

Agility Videos from last weekend

Here's videos of our runs from last weekend. Enzo got a Double Q on Friday. He almost ran past a jump at the end in JWW but I saved it at the last moment. The tunnel was calling his name. lol.



He had a nice run in standard. I was worried about the turn to the tunnel under the dogwalk but we got it! The rest of the course was pretty straighforward.



Then Sunday's JWW, I decided to try for a front cross that I knew was borderline for whether or not I could get there. It was close but I was late which caused him to knock the triple.




Another nice standard Sunday afternoon. He was a little short on his DW contact but didn't get called. It wasn't a very nice approach up the dogwalk but I didn't want to hang back to manage it because that would put me too far behind.

2011 start of frisbee season videos

Here's Enzo's video. Near perfect routine. At 55 seconds into the video, I attempt to throw a disc under my leg and the disc hits my KNEE on the way under and knocks it out of my hand. It wasn't even where I attempted to throw it... Is it a perfect routine? Maybe not. Is it a 0-drop routine? I would argue yes! Oh, and the reason it happened is because that small sequence is completely freestyle. I don't have anything set that I do there, and that is the only part of my routine that is like that, except for the very end if I have extra time. This "drop" is probably going to haunt me for a long time. There is one thing I have really wanted to achieve with each dog and that's a perfect routine. Stupid, stupid, stupid.



Here's Tooney's routine and we got her toss/fetch on film also! She is one of the most amazing toss/fetch dogs EVER and her freestyle is good, too. She has a "big" frisbee routine where she covers lots of ground and lots of medium to long throws.

First disc dog competition of 2011

2011 disc dog season started off for us with a UFO local championship.

First off, the most important announcement. Tooney was back competing at full strength! She did great. As usual, in toss/fetch she didn't drop a disc (14.5 points) and for the first time in about 9 months, she had her first freestyle round! About 3 weeks ago we did a 1 minute freestyle round in practice, but that was literally the only time we did any freestyle at all since last year! She did great and finished in 5th place!

Next, and a close 2nd, Enzo had his first sort of perfect round! He had 0 drops, I had 1. I actually fumbled a disc and it snagged my shorts when I tried to throw it and it fell about 2' in front of me. It appears to have been counted as a throw as they had Enzo with 96% catch ratio. Jenn will post a video. Enzo was perfect in toss/fetch although I couldn't hit the bonus zone and got 13.5 points. I threw everything either to the sides of the bonus zone or past it.

Oh yeah, Enzo won the competition :)

2 More Good Dogwalks and a DQ!

Well we finally got a JWW Q and a Double Q on Saturday! It has been about a month since the last time Enzo and I Q'd in JWW! You would think it would be standard that we would have issues Qing in since switching to running contacts but no, not after the first month. So I spent most of our practice this week focusing back on my handling skills. In standard the course had the dogwalk going into nothing with a right turn pull to a jump. Probably the toughest dogwalk exit for us. I could have actuallyh done a big leadout and pushed off the dogwalk but I decided to try the pull and it worked! we got the double Q with two 1st places! I think with pulls off the dogwalk I just have to time it so that I can be running hard towards the end but be just a step behind him as he hits the contacts.

Today's runs didn't go quite as well but we did have good contacts again! well at least the dogwalk and aframe. He did come off the teeter a bit early. It wasn't called but it did cause him to miss the next jump which was a tight 180 turn.

More Good Dogwalks at the Mudfest

So we ran at a mudfest of an agility trial last weekend. It rained Saturday but luckily I only entered Sunday and Monday! The mud definitely didn't slow Enzo down much but it slowed me down a lot. In Sunday's JWW, he was running great in the mud, stayed in the weaves when I left laterally but then I didn't support a send enough and he came flying toward me. Oops on my part but I thought that jump would be more of a given.

Then the standard course was kind of interesting. The teeter was sticking in the mud when it hit and when that happened Enzo stuck the teeter too! Only a split second but still a definite pause. So that has me wondering if it's the rebound on the teeter that makes him want to get off quickly or if he sees that as his release. The line after teeter didn't go too well but I saved it. I must have put pressure on his line before he passed me by. He did lateral weaves again with no problem. I front crossed before the aframe just to make sure I could get ahead for the dogwalk but I almost didn't make the front cross because I couldn't run quickly in the mud. I think that might be why he was a little high on the aframe but he still got in. His dogwalk was awesome though and he did push out incredibly even though I didn't quite get ahead of him for the push. Got the Q though and 1st place!



Monday, Jeff came along since we both had the holiday. JWW had some pretty tough lines and a lot of zig zag stuff. I did a double front cross in the beginning and that actually went pretty well. Then in the sequence after the weaves I did a front into a rear cross but he didn't see my rear cross and we got a back jump. A lot of people ran ahead and serped or pushed off the jump before the one I got a backjump on but I didn't really think I could get there with Enzo and it would be really ugly if I didn't.



In standard, he had great contacts again but clipped a bar. After watching the video, I wasn't real happy with how far to the right I ran before rear crossing the tunnel. I need to focus on setting his line early and then driving in a straight line. Then going through the box after the tunnel I didn't set his line properly again and he ran for the back of the chute!

Video of both runs that Jeff took:



The overhead view of standard:

Coming soon...

A new member of Team Furrari is coming in April!

USDAA Trial

Had fun at the USDAA trial this weekend. First one that I've been to in quite a few months. I decided to run Enzo in Performance. Probably will from now on. I definitely have more fun running him at 16" than 22". Tooney also ran in one run each day. P3 Gamblers yesterday and P3 Jumpers today. She didn't get the gamble which was near impossible but she ran clean in Jumpers! She's a good girl and it's fun to be running her again. No video so I'll write a little play by play.

Enzo was really awesome all weekend. He missed his very first dogwalk of the weekend but it was a dogwalk going into nothing in gamblers which is a weak point. We turned around and did it again and he got it. He didn't miss anymore contacts the rest of the weekend and we didn't have any contact related handling faults. Woohoo! In P3 standard, he knocked the first bar and fell off the table but other than that he did great. He even had to turn up the dogwalk from the tunnel underneath and still got he contact. I recalled him up the dogwalk instead of babysitting the entrance and that let me run up and did a front cross at the end. Glad I practiced that at home this week!

Enzo ran clean in Performance Grand Prix. The dogwalk exit was straight off so that made it easier. He ended up in 2nd place by 0.2 sec. There was one wide turn when I was late on my front cross so that cost a little time. I need to make sure I rotate quicker when I front cross. One of my bad habits.

In Performance Speed Jumping (or is it Performance Steeplechase now?) I was late on a front cross again and he almost took an off course jump but he called off of it but knocked the next bar. He still made it into the second round and got a Q.

Today we ran in gamblers first and this time it was a more reasonable gamble. You could pick either a weave send or teeter send so I picked the weave send. He sent out to the weaves but when he got there he stopped and looked at me standing next to the teeter and ran back. Gamblers just isn't something I train for so can't blame him. He did hit both dogwalks though! Then we had to run the 2nd round of PSJ right after that. Sometimes he's slower when he does back to back runs but he wasn't this time! I ended getting stuck behind him and got an off course.

P3 Standard was good but unfortunately he knocked the very last bar! I think he lost his footing in the dirt. I heard him scambling. oh well! nice run anyways.

P3 Snookers was pretty straightforward. I did two 6's and two 7's. He finished everything and ended up 1st for a Super Q! Good boy! Snookers with him always makes me a bit nervous since he's and scanner and shoots away from me easily.

P3 jumpers had some tricky angles. At this point the dirt was hard packed with loose stuff on top so he had trouble with his footing and wasn't able to run as fast. He tries to hard to move quicker, lots of scrambly steps and knocked a bar.

I'm happy with his runs this weekend even though the Q rate wasn't high. He got 6 of 7 dogwalks and all of his aframes!

Trial this weekend

First of all this was Tooney's return to agility! hooray! I just did one JWW run with her. She seemed really happy to be running again. One bar down that was mainly just because I fell behind at the straight tunnel. Her run went much better than Enzo's did! Here's Tooney's video:



Enzo had a great run in Standard yesterday and won the class. Had a few wide turns but he nailed his running dogwalk! The front cross really seems to bring him down deep into the contact even if he does go a bit behind me. I've kind of figured out that I really just need to run hard so that he extends down into the zone.
Here's the video that shows his dogwalk contact and then the other is a better view of the run.





Today Enzo had a nice JWW run but one bar came down. It was a really fast course so he was really skimming those bars.


Standard was quite an exciting run. Great dogwalk contact again. Kind of crazy aframe. He cut me off down that line at the end when I got behind. we need to work on that. Two different views again of this one.

Catching up.

I'm behind again on posting. Anyways here's video from last weekend's trial.





He double Q'd and placed 1st in both runs. His standard run was smoking but looks like he actually missed the contact but didn't get called.

I also have video from Thursday and Friday's dogwalk practice. Thursday I worked some turns back into the tunnel under the dogwalk which went pretty well. Pulling still not working.



Friday's practice I worked on driving straight, pulling into the tunnel, and pulling off the tunnel completely . Seems like front crosses close to the dogwalk work ok for him.



Today we went to a trial and didn't do so great. In JWW, he knocked the first bar and then had some other issues. In standard, it was a really difficult dogwalk exit. It was a tight pull to a aframe/tunnel discrimination and the dogwalk was going into the fence. They had to take the tunnel which was closer and really tight to get into it. Then the jump after the tunnel was really far and hard to get to. I couldn't come up with a good solution so decided to try running laterally to the tunnel entrance. I lead out a little too far and got to the tunnel a step too soon and enzo came off the side of the dogwalk. Well, at least I know that lateral distance and not driving forward isn't going to work for us right now.

Working turns

The first few were straight off and then I did some backchaining. He got really distracted by the neighbor's gardeners so I gave up on that and just tried some turns off the whole dogwalk. He hit the contact no problem but didn't turn so good. Work in progress I guess!

Trial, Lesson and Tooney

Saturday D2ISC had a playday so we took Tooney and Enzo. I did little demo with the fitpaws peanut and was really suprised at the interest that it generated. Then they did a little mock toss and fetch competition. Jeff threw for tooney and we both threw for enzo. Jeff went out with a plan to throw 2 shorter throws, a long throw, and then the shorter throws again for tooney. She was a good girlie and caught all 5 throws. Even placed 3rd in the mock competition!

Sunday I went down to San Diego for one day of a trial. I was supposed to run Tooney for the first time since her injury in JWW but Sat night I thought I saw a tiny hitch in her step. I got paranoid so decided to leave her at home. She seems like she is fine now but best to play it safe.

Enzo did really good at the trial though and ended up with a double q and two first places! His dogwalk was not so great but he didn't get called so he must of gotten a toe in. His aframe was really good and well in the zone and I was running ahead and a little lateral. The judge had some fast fun courses. I did buy the video and will post when I get the links.

Then Sunday afternoon I had a private lesson with Stephanie to work on running dogwalk handling. We basically worked on some different scenarios just to find out what Enzo can deal with me doing and still get his contact. Enzo seems to do well with me running ahead or lateral. If I'm a little bit behind and running hard, that's ok but if I am too far behind then he puts in extra steps but still gets the contact. The thing that was most difficult was the hard 90 deg turns. On pulls he shortened up and on front crosses he would run behind me to an off course. Stephanie suggested practicing pulls with backchaining and the box on the dogwalk. It just dawned on me now that we never tried front crosses without an off course looming. I also need to try turning into a tunnel under the dogwalk.

Friday Dogwalk Practice

Here's the video from yesterday. Enzo had a bit of extra boing! in his step yesterday. He boinged for almost every toy throw and he had a few where he just leapt off the dogwalk from the middle. Otherwise he did really good. Even did good with the pull into the hard side of the tunnel.



Seems like he's still hanging around 70% accuracy. would love to see that up to 80-90%

Sunday's Dogwalk Training

Here's some of our dogwalk practice from Sunday.


Trying to work turns still and he's doing better with the box again. I didn't get it on video but I tried with the one bar at the top of the contact He didn't really seem to get it and started just leaping at the bar. I might try two bars one at the top of the contact and one at the bottom and see if that looks a little different to him.

Oh and I also got a call off of the tunnel at the other end! Didn't get that on video either. Been trying to do every so often but he always would blast into the tunnel.

Running Dogwalk from this week

I was sick with a cold this week so didn't really feel like posting our practice sessions so I'm putting them all in this post.

Our first practice session this week, I was feeling like crap but didn't want to slack off too much so I went out and did a quick session with Enzo. He was doing great without the box again but I wanted to work turns and though the box would help. Unfortunately he completely forgot the box and acted like it was on fire! I was too tired to work through it so let it go.



Here's our next practice session which was a couple days after that. This time I worked through the issues with the box.



By the end of the session he was doing better with the box.

Here's today's session. I started without the box and then put it back on. He's still doing better without the box on straight exits but he really needs some kind of help on turns. He shortens up and then doesn't make the contact.



My instructor, Stephanie suggested trying to use just a bar and see if I can teach him that he just needs to step over the bar. I might try that tommorrow.

Trial

So we got to test out Enzo's new running contacts this past weekend. Saturday he did great on both the aframe and the dogwalk but had some issues with the obstacle after the contacts. He went over an off course jump after the aframe and fell of the table after the dogwalk. I forgot to put the memory card back in my camera on Saturday so I didn't get video of that run (oops). His dogwalk was really solid and all 4 feet deep in the yellow!

I did get video of Sunday's run. He went over an off course jump right in the opening unfortunately. His aframe was great and his dogwalk was no so good but he didn't get called. It looks like he collected his stride a bit so didn't make it down far enough. I decided to test his table a bit and of course yes there is a reason why I normally don't move a muscle when he's on the table!



Oh and he had great JWW runs both days and placed 2nd both days.

Boxless Dogwalk Sucess!

I decided to try starting out with no box today. The dogwalk worked great! He nailed the first one, and then missed the second one which I accidentally clicked...oops. Then he got the rest. The dogwalk second from the end, he did get a foot down right at the end. I didn't see it real time but saw the dogwalk bounce in the video. I had to watch the video like 5 times to see it for sure so I wouldn't really expect a judge to see that. The last two I did some gentle turns at the end by moving his jump standard over a few feet. That's probably why they weren't quite as good.



The boxless aframe didn't work quite as well. The first one he one strided and missed. The second one was two strides but a little high so I put the box back and he did better. I even did one at the end with me moving away laterally.

Decent Practice Today

That first dogwalk looks like he actually got but just barely got his front feet in at the bottom. I thought so but wasn't sure until I watched the video. I didn't mark it as wrong but didn't reward either. All of his misses today were ones where he didn't put that second stride in which seems better than him putting in two strides but not getting down far enough in my mind since the one stride should be easier to fix than trying to get him to sometimes add a 3rd stride. He may need to sometimes though. We'll have to see.

He also did much better with his aframes today. No misses. The video didn't work but I did an extra one at the end to get the video and stuck it at the end of the dogwalk videos.

Last Practice before the rain

It's supposed to rain from today through Tuesday but I managed to sneak in a quick practice session right as the rain was starting. Got Jeff to video so I didn't have to mess with the camera.

I did a few reps on the dogwalk and all looked good so I left it at that and moved over to the aframe. I'm beginning to get a little worried about how I'm going to handle this though!



His aframe performance backslid a little today. I put the box back and he did ok. I'm going to need to move the tunnel back next time to give him a better approach and hopefully that helps. Next time probably won't be until Thursday or Friday though!

Aframe and Dogwalk Video

I haven't video'd any aframes for a while because I've just been doing a couple here and there. He had been doing really good on them but of course missed a bunch for the video! I know why though. I moved the tunnel from the end of the aframe and put it at the end of the dogwalk so coming down in that direction he's coming down into the wall. he has enough room but it's making him shorten up his strides. You can see that he does good going in the other direction.



I will probably have to avoid going in the direction toward the wall without the tunnel there, at least for now.

His dogwalk session looks pretty similar to other recent sessions. Missing some but doing really good on others.