Team Furrari - Agility and Disc Aussies

An agility post!

2012-02-14T21:30:00.000-08:00

I'm behind on posting again of course. First I wanted to post a couple of Enzo videos from an AKC trial a couple weeks ago. I don't really remember the runs too much now but I know that Enzo is awesome! LOL.

AKC Nationals is coming up soon. We haven't been too consistent lately. No big issues, just a tiny bit off. We've been doing quite a bit more ASCA than normal and the courses are so different. I've decided not to do any more ASCA until after AKC Nationals. Maybe that will help...

Slayte's running contacts seems to be progressing well. I haven't been obsessively taking video but took this one just to get a data point. I did a lot of board running with him and this was probably after a week or two on the low dogwalk. I'm having him run to a Manners Minder. Hopefully using that won't create the crazy obstacle focus that Enzo has after the dogwalk. The first hit was a little high and there was one big leap somewhere in the middle but the rest were pretty nice. he seems to be really consistent lately and I am thinking about puttting my dogwalk back together and having him do the full height DW. I don't have any video but I also used the PVC box on the board and DW when he was having trouble hitting where I wanted him to. I am approaching this a little differently than the general thinking and am mostly rewarding for location vs splitting feet. My theory is that if they understand where you want them to hit then the gait will happen naturally when they are driving. That's how it worked for Enzo anyways and seems to be working for Slayte so far.

Slayte Turns One!

2012-02-05T18:44:00.000-08:00

Friday was Slayte's 1 year old Birthday! Time really flies! Here is a year in pictures! Love this dog!

1 day:

5 days:

4 weeks:

6 weeks:

10 weeks:

3 months:

4 months:

5 months:

6 months:

8 months:

10 Months:

1 year!

First Disc Dog Action of 2012

2012-01-29T21:06:00.001-08:00

The morning started off with an AKC agility trial. Maybe Jenn will get the videos up that I recorded. Enzo looked awesome and won one run and missed an a-frame contact in the other run. Around noon, Jenn finished up with agility and we headed to a disc dog clinic.

I usually help out more with the clinics, particularly with people new to the sport, but we got there a bit late and things were already moving along. We did, however, make it in time for the mock toss/fetch competition. Tooney, Enzo and Slayte had their first taste of competition, even though it was just for fun. If we are on a big field with a bunch of people watching, they know it's game time.

I think my throwing technique is continuing to improve. I had no warmup, but my throws were still going 47-50 yards. It was crazy. I went 1st with Slayte and I got two long throws out to him and he caught both. I had about 30 seconds left when he returned and Jenn and I decided to call the round at that time. He's young and we want to keep it intense and fun. It was very warm and sunny out and he tends to run to the shade, but he didn't do that. It was a good call and his round was a huge success. For Tooney, I had a solid round with her, but she had one miss. At the end I went with Enzo and he did awesome, catching every disc in the air at nearly 50 yards. He got 18 points, enough for 3rd place and won a free toy for Slayte to destroy.

Jenn got to play with all three dogs also. She had good rounds with all the dogs and I think each dog had one miss. She stopped her round with Slayte after three throws for the same reason I stopped my round and again it was a successful round for him.

Disc Dog Goals for 2012

2012-01-26T15:13:00.000-08:00

I have been meaning to put up a list of goals for the 2012 disc dog season. My hope is to look at this at the end of 2012 and see how well I followed through and maybe check it throughout the year to remind myself of what we are trying to do. These are new goals or things that I still need to really work on. I will go in order of seniority.

Me:

- Avoid injury by not over practicing, despite sometimes wanting to practice for long periods of time. Keep it to 1-3 times per month at the park for 30ish minutes.

- Don't throw anything short of the maximum point line in toss/fetch. Past 40 yards is normally my target.

- Work on getting a better air bounce and skip that can be used in routines confidently. I can execute the throws, but not in any conditions and with confidence.

- Be confident for the dogs and give them the best chance to excel and have fun. For them, having fun is running, jumping and catching discs. Put the disc where they have a chance to catch it every time.

Tooney:

- No injuries. She couldn't compete most of 2010 due to injury and came back big in 2011 with some great performances and wins. It took half the season for her to get her stamina back, but she's as good as ever right now.

- Continue doing her exercise ball at least every other day, preferrably 4-5 times a week to keep her strong.

- Keep it fun for her. If she is still running and happy at the end of every round, then I'm doing the right thing.

- Get Jenn some chances to compete with her. As Tooney is getting older, Jenn's opportunities to really play with her are less and less. Tooney is the dog that really gave Jenn the chance to do well in agility, so she deserves more time with Toons. Jenn will never ask to have a round with her when I could be playing with her, but I have to do my best to get Jenn some opportunities. She is at the age where competing with two people is not possible, so we need to manage her play time wisely.

- Here's a lofty goal - set a masters division record at our Skyhoundz Regional for either freestyle or toss/fetch points.

Enzo:

- Whatever Enzo does pretty much is golden to me. In my mind, he can do no wrong. (yes, this is a goal... the goal is to continue to think this way)

- Continue to put the discs in a place for him in toss/fetch that show him off and rack up big points. I feel so fortunate to have finally developed the rhythm, teamwork and skills to do this with him. Don't lose it!!! He was good in 2010 and awesome in 2011.

- Come up with more unique throws/tricks for freestyle. I don't want to make a higher % of tricks in my routine - just replace some I already have by big improvements to the trick itself or to the flow of the trick into the next sequence or from the previous sequence. Also consider replacing entire trick sequences if I am able to come up with something completely novel.

- Do more traditional types of things that people do to make their dogs look good. One thing I never did with Enzo was a distance multiple. (short, medium, long rapidly). I am doing this now. This is a skill neither he nor I had in the past. We do now. He looks great doing this. It's traditional and so many people do it, but there's a reason. Dogs look great catching lots of discs quickly and running/jumping. He does all of those in 1 sequence that lasts 5 seconds at most, but is a huge impression to everybody watching. Maybe do more things like this in the routine, but without losing my ingenuity.

Slayte:

- Stay on the field for the entire round. Keep his interest up, especially when it's hot out or he's showing that he may be distracted. Focus, fun and energy are the ingredients required.

- Improve catching ability. Hopefully he learns on his own, otherwise maybe try some softer discs that won't bounce of the teeth as easily if his timing is a bit off. He tends to either not bite the disc deep in his mouth or he closes his mouth before he gets to the disc. The result is the disc bounces off his teeth.

- Try to put up a few big scores in toss/fetch because I know he can do it.

Wow - that is a lot of stuff.

Slayte, every... single... day....

2012-01-23T10:14:00.000-08:00

As we have said quite a few times, Slayte is non-stop. I can't imagine a dog that has more energy than him. We take him herding, practice agility, frisbee and add to that balance ball exercising, tug sessions and all the play time he has with the other dogs, all within a 4-6 hour period. He still barks at us to do something else with him. I hope I survive this dog long enough for him to mature and settle down. He keeps saying "more more more more more more more more more more more more..."

See here for example:

Slayte Future Full Member of Team Furrari???

2012-01-08T21:38:00.001-08:00

(the following quotes are excerpts from the back of Slayte's Disc Doggin / Agility sports card)

Windsor's Slay It! (Slayte/LG)
Born: 2/3/2011
Height: 19.25"
Weight: 34lb

Born the pup of proud parents and a family with a long lineage of champions. From a young age, this athlete has shown the athletic skills and potential to be a champion in his own right. An athletic mold of perfection from strength, blazing speed and jumping ability, the only lingering question is whether or not he has the determination to be a winner. As a first round draft pick, the expectations are high.

You aren't born into Team Furrari. You earn it. Coming up on a year old, Slayte needs to start thinking more seriously about his future. He is considering the training, skills, focus and leadership skills required to move up from the practice squad to be a full starting player.

Stats: 4 disc competitions, 14 points total.

Funny trivia: Known as LG (short for Little Guy)

The first part was Jeff and now this is Jenn typing. On a more serious note, Slayte is making a lot of progress in his training. He has tons of drive and speed. He's awesome at tracking frisbees, retrieves to hand, and loves to play. His retrieves are way faster now as long as he is not too tired. He really seems to like agility a lot too. He's doing short sequences now, low teeter, and I am working on his running dogwalk on the plank. His main issue now is sustained focus. He is easily distracted by people and dogs and he also tends to quit and run to the shade in frisbee when he gets a little hot. Hopefully these are things that maturity will take care of. He still barks at us when he's bored but at least it forces us to do stuff with him and not be lazy.

I love my LG, I've really bonded with him more than any other dog we've had. He's my constant shadow. It doesn't matter how much of a pain he is, how many things he destroys, or if never end up accomplishing anything, I just love him! I don't how a dog can be so sweet and such a butthole at the same time!!

Tooney and Enzo Awards Through 2010

2012-01-07T20:14:00.000-08:00

We decided to take pictures of the dogs with the major/finals awards they won. They earned many, many more than these, but we were only keeping major/finals awards, so all the local competitions got thrown out or donated back to the club right away. I didn't want to try and figure out which dog won which award, so let's just say they both won a lot of awards and we're very proud of them both. I decided not to get in on the pictures (same with Jenn) because the dogs are the ones that won the awards. They work hard, have fun and go out there and do their best. Luckly, we have two dogs (with another in training) that are at the top of the game. My part is pretty easy compared to what they have to do, so they won these awards. Everything was thrown out after the pix except for the award presented to Enzo and I by the club as the 2009 champions because that award feels personal and has our names on it.

Enjoy the pix, they worked hard for these!

Herding with Slayte

2011-12-28T10:40:00.000-08:00

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

2011-12-12T21:39:00.000-08:00

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

Trying Herding Again

2011-12-03T16:57:00.000-08:00

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

2011-11-09T14:06:00.001-08:00

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

2011-11-05T22:08:00.000-07:00

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

2011-10-03T09:03:00.001-07:00

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

2011-10-02T22:36:00.000-07:00

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

2011-09-03T15:50:00.001-07:00

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

2011-08-31T09:14:00.001-07:00

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

2011-08-31T08:54:00.000-07:00

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

2011-08-09T09:30:00.000-07:00

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

2011-07-26T12:22:00.000-07:00

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!

2011-07-20T19:52:00.000-07:00

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

2011-07-17T23:14:00.000-07:00

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

2011-07-07T08:57:00.000-07:00

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.

2011-06-30T20:42:00.000-07:00

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!

2011-06-13T18:22:00.000-07:00

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

2011-06-07T23:22:00.001-07:00

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

2011-05-31T09:33:00.001-07:00

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

2011-05-30T07:33:00.000-07:00

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

2011-05-26T21:21:00.001-07:00

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

2011-05-16T11:53:00.000-07:00

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

2011-05-07T19:13:00.001-07:00

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

2011-05-03T23:28:00.000-07:00

11/23/1997 - 5/3/2011

We already miss you, Beeb.

Enzo turns 5!

2011-04-29T22:12:00.000-07:00

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!!

2011-04-26T22:14:00.000-07:00

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!

2011-04-14T20:59:00.000-07:00

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

2011-04-07T16:07:00.000-07:00

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

2011-04-05T17:41:00.000-07:00

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

2011-04-03T07:32:00.000-07:00

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

2011-03-14T09:30:00.000-07:00

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

2011-03-10T20:10:00.000-08:00

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

2011-03-08T09:39:00.001-08:00

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

2011-03-05T20:20:00.000-08:00

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!

2011-02-27T20:09:00.000-08:00

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

2011-02-24T19:27:00.000-08:00

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...

2011-02-14T21:38:00.000-08:00

A new member of Team Furrari is coming in April!

USDAA Trial

2011-02-13T20:15:00.000-08:00

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

2011-02-06T15:55:00.001-08:00

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.

2011-01-29T16:18:00.000-08:00

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

2011-01-25T20:29:00.000-08:00

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

2011-01-25T13:34:00.001-08:00

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

2011-01-22T13:45:00.000-08:00

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

2011-01-17T21:22:00.000-08:00

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

2011-01-15T19:52:00.000-08:00

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

2011-01-10T19:24:00.000-08:00

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!

2011-01-06T19:22:00.000-08:00

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

2011-01-04T21:15:00.000-08:00

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

2011-01-02T17:12:00.000-08:00

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

2011-01-01T19:05:00.000-08:00

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.

More Dogwalk Practice

2010-12-31T15:57:00.000-08:00

My camera's still acting up so I just got the beginning and end of our session. He started out missing again but then settled down. He started getting some good hits that I didn't get on video so I decided to try a couple without the box and he did good!

Today's Dogwalk Session

2010-12-30T17:13:00.000-08:00

Today's dogwalk session started out not so good but ended well. After watching the video, I think he was focusing on the toy I was holding and not the box or the jump standard that he was supposed to wrap at the end of the dogwalk. I should have put the toy on the ground. I also tried taking off the 3-way connectors on the end so maybe that was too soon for that. I think next time I'll also put my tunnel at the opposite end so he has something to drive to going that way.

I got a few good dogwalks at the end of our session but my video cut off again so I set it up again and had him do one good one for the camera. I really like that last one!

Running (jumping?) dogwalk training

2010-12-29T20:00:00.000-08:00

More video of our dogwalk training with the box. The top bar is off of the box and he doesn't seem to notice. He's more consistantly dong two strides instead of three into the box but that last stride is pretty big. I'm hoping his strides will even out like they did on the aframe and then this may actually work! Keeping my fingers crossed. Either way this is an interesting experiment. I'm quite amazed how similar he looks on the dogwalk and the aframe.

Running Dogwalk Experiment

2010-12-28T18:23:00.000-08:00

Enzo's understanding of getting in the box seemed to work so well on the aframe so I am trying it on the dogwalk too. He definitely understands getting in the box on the dogwalk but I don't know if it will hold up without the box.

My video camera was also acting up and stopped recording on it's own both sessions today. Hopefully it just needed to be charged but it was showing half battery...

Enzo's X-mas present to me!

2010-12-26T17:16:00.001-08:00

A real running aframe!

He pretty much has this down! I think I pretty much just have to work on handling it and independence now. I don't feel like he is relying on my body position very much so hopefully that will come easily too. I had no idea it would come this easily this time or I would have tried it a lot sooner. I was afraid to try before the Invitational.

I'm leaning towards not trying to work up to the 5'11" aframe for USDAA and just entering him in Perf. from now on. I think this aframe is too good for me to mess with and I don't think he will ever be a consistent 22" jumper anyways. 20" he does pretty good at but 22" is a stretch.

I'm also playing around with the box on the dogwalk but not sure about how that is going to work yet. He understands getting in it when it's on, but without it on, I'm not sure it will be consistent because his striding is not consistent yet. I tried to record that too but apparently didn't hit record!

First Trial with Running Aframe

2010-12-19T21:49:00.000-08:00

So far so good! We've only been working the box on the aframe for a week but I was entered in a trial this weekend. I had no idea what he was going to do on the aframe but figured there was really no harm in trying. Saturday he was high but in. Pretty much just right below the line. Forgot my camera on Saturday but got video from Sunday. His aframe on Sunday was perfect! I'm excited that this is going so well so quickly. I plan to keep working with the box on the aframe with him. Neverending rain right now though.

Trying a running aframe again...

2010-12-16T19:35:00.000-08:00

When Enzo started agility we tried a running aframe. I tried all kinds of things, stride regulators, foot target, putting jumps close to the end of the aframe. He would always either jump too long over the top and one stride or do two shorter strides and jump off in almost the exact same place as the one stride. We never got much better than 50% success rate so I switched him to 2on/2off.

Earlier in the year I did the groundwork for the box but never put it on the aframe. I didn't really want to change anything before the invitational. I started doing quick releases on the Aframe and Dogwalk and over time lost his stop completely. I can manage his contacts by handling but there is no independence at all so I am now re-evaluating. I've been working the box on the aframe for about a week now and I am excited because it might actually work!

Here's the video from our practice sessions. I didn't record our very first session where I was introducing him to the box on the aframe but all the rest are here.

At Sarah's suggestion I moved the box up since he was stepping on it and it seemed to help a lot. He seems to be evening out his strides and ending up deeper. Thanks Sarah!

He also did really well with the box on the aframe in class last night in full sequences. He probably did better there than at home but I don't have video to check.

So hopefully this will all hold up once the box comes off! Keeping fingers crossed.

Our AKC Invitational Experience

2010-12-07T19:47:00.000-08:00

Here's a compilation of all of Enzo's runs for the weekend.

On Friday, we ran the FAST class which was for warmup only and didn't count for anything. They pretty much told us we could use our time to do whatever we wanted so I worked his contacts. He flew off the teeter the first time so I had him do it again and he was good the 2nd time. Then his aframe was close so I decided to keep going and then his dogwalk wasn't so great so I made him do that again too. I was hoping that would all sink in for him for the next days but really had no idea what he would do.

Saturday started out with standard. Luckily they were all turns off the contact so I didn't have to drive ahead on them. Enzo normally does better with me hanging back a little. He was quite amped for his run but his contacts ended up all being awesome. Unfortunately I called "come!" right over the panel before the weaves and that ended up coming down. I was kicking myself for that for a while but I'm over it now :-) Enzo was really fast and had some tight turns. He ended up having the fastest time of the 16" dogs but had the fault.

Round 2 was JWW, pretty tough course with some box work which used to be a huge weakness of ours but I finally figured out how to handle him through boxes. He was flying through this run and I almost lost him to a couple off courses but we made it and ended up winning! The andrenaline was really pumping after this run and my hands were shaking so much that I had trouble buckling his harness!

Sunday was a horribly early day. We had to be there by 5:45 for the general walkthrough and our ring started running at 7. I was not really awake for my runs. First run was JWW. Not a horrible course. Everyone's biggest concern was the turn over the broadjump. Funny thing is that I never saw any dogs have issues with it. I lost enzo right at the beginning to the weave poles. I should have held up there for a moment but I never thought the weaves would have been that much of a draw. Watching the video, I'd say that my motion getting around that winged jump pushed him out there. The we had a bar down where I got in his way on the serpentine and I pulled him off the jump in the corner which you can't see in the video.

Then our last run was the Hybrid round. He didn't hold his startline for as on as I wanted and I was late on the front cross and ended up flinging him out towards the weaves again! I should have rear crossed there. So after that I just thought oh well lets just run fast! He nailed his aframe contact but flew off the teeter and took an off course jump.

I was really happy with how Enzo was running all weekend. He found some extra speed that I wasn't totally prepared for but he was really fun to run. Having to line up in the chute for 5 or 6 dogs ahead was a little tough since he focused on the course so early but he was really good about the dogs being close to him. He's such a good boy and tries really hard. I really hope that we can make it to AKC Nationals next year but we'll see.

Here's our 1st place JWW run again just because:

AKC Invitationals and Tooney

2010-12-06T10:47:00.001-08:00

First off, Jenn will surely do a better post on AKC Invitationals including videos, but I thought I'd do a quick post. She and Enzo were awesome. On Saturday, they had the fastest times in both standard and jumpers. Enzo dropped a bar in the standard run but was clean in the jumpers. That means Jenn and Enzo both got their first ever 1st place finish at a national championship! Congrats to both! On Sunday they had a few mistakes so weren't able to finish at the top in either run.

Tooney is also doing really well after several months of recovering from her mysterious left leg injury (still not known exactly what it was). After lots of rehab and love, she is starting to play frisbee again, so that is really exciting. We're taking it super slow with her. It's been about 5 months since we started resting and rehab. She is free to run around with Enzo and isn't wearing a brace anymore. She is currently running down about 7-10 throws in the 10-15 yard range. I've got a good feeling that she will be able to make the 1st frisbee competition of the year in March.

Jenn and I are talking about what to do for agility. Jenn thinks that if Tooney is able to do agility, maybe bring her back just for her last AKC finals (in Virginia). She is already qualified, so she could just do some warm up and practice leading to the competition. It would be a good way to retire her from agility. The thought is that maybe if she retires from agility, she could play frisbee longer. We believe the frisbee play will be less demanding on her body. Maybe she could move down to the 12" jump division in AKC and continue to do some jumpers or fast courses there. We are mostly worried about her A-frame. It's awesome to watch how she lands half way down the down side, but we think it is probably too rough on the front of her body.

To say the least, I'm excited about Tooney's progress. I have a feeling that she is going to be back 100% playing frisbee in a couple of months. It's a big turn around from when we saw no progress for weeks and weeks at a time.

Jenn and Enzo AKC Agility Invitationals!!!

2010-11-30T13:03:00.000-08:00

Jenn and Enzo are going to compete at the AKC Agility Invitationals. They competed a whole year earning points towards the Invitational. Their hard work paid off and they are going into the finals as the #3 ranked Australian Shepherd team. I am super proud of them and can't wait to see them compete this weekend.

Jenny - I want you to think about it this way. The year you spent competing and qualifying for the Invitational was the real journey. You've already reached the goal. This weekend is just bonus and you guys have earned it. Enzo will surely go out and have pure fun and do what he does best. Following your lead, run fast and jump a lot. I am sure you will have fun watching your little multitalented gifted atheletic intense superstar rock the joint, whether he wins or not. Was that enough adjectives to describe Enzo? Not really... fantastic, exciting and jumpy-mcjumpenstein are a few more. Oh yeah - you're not too shabby yourself.

Last Trial before Invitational!

2010-11-28T10:34:00.000-08:00

I entered Enzo in two days of the 3 day Thanksgiving weekend trial. Last weekend to practice before the invitational. The first run on Friday was standard and it was a train wreck! He was totally wild and kind of doing his own thing. My main concern was him blowing his dogwalk contact off the start but his teeter was good and aframe kind of borderline but he got it. His JWW was good though and he got first place. He was still pretty amped up and I felt like I was just barely holding on. Probably a side effect of not getting worked enough lately by either me or Jeff. It's hard when it gets dark so early.

Sunday's Standard went much better. His contacts were all solid and he was paying attention. He had a blazing fast run and got first place. There were a couple wraps and he turned tight on them. I think he had the fastest time of all the heights too. He did break his startline right before I released him which should have been a hint to me in JWW.

So in JWW I was planning on leading out to tthe 3rd jump and doing a lead out pivot but enzo went when I was halfway between the 2nd and 3rd jump. I tried to do a running front cross and he knocked the triple (2nd jump) and then pulled into the wrong end of the tunnel which I was too far behind for. I was happy with the rest of the run though. I just need to be aware that I may not have a long leadout at the invitational. At Nationals they usually try to design courses that don't allow for long leadouts because it makes the day go faster so hopefully that's the case for Invitational too!

Well the rest of the week is going to be contact practice, some stay practice and maybe some lateral weave practice!

Videos from 11/13-11/14/2010

2010-11-20T20:41:00.000-08:00

Here's Enzo's JWW run from Saturday. This was our only clean run from the weekend. Enzo got 1st place.

Enzo's standard run from Saturday. I crowded him on the dogwalk and made him come off the side away from me. Then he knocked the panel. I'm pretty sure it was because I was looking at the dogwalk trying to get around it. He tends to knock bars when I take my eyes off of him completely.

This is Enzo's JWW run from Sunday. Just the weave pole pop out at pole 10. It's not really typical for him so I'm not worried.

And his Sunday standard run. I thought this was clean but he called called on the teeter, a good run anyways.

UFO World Cup Finals!!!

2010-10-24T18:18:00.000-07:00

San Diego hosted the 2010 UFO World Cup Finals and we were well prepared and super excited to compete in this event. We had competitors from Germany and Netherlands as well as all over the U.S. It ran from Friday into Sunday and there seemed to be round after round after round of competition. I think about 10 total rounds. Enzo and I were both exhausted at the end of the day Sunday. There were ups and downs for Enzo and I as a team, but my best buddy managed to pull out a solid round every time he needed to.

Friday was an open qualifier that Enzo needed to do well to get points for the season championship. Enzo was AWESOME! I was so proud of him. He did great in both freestyle and toss/fetch. Our best freestyle round is the first video below with one of the top scores for the day. His toss/fetch round was the 6th best out of over 50 teams! So much for toss/fetch being his weakeness! That is long behind us. Now he's solid on both. He finished 5th overall and gained lots of points. He moved from #25 in the world to #12 after the day was over.

Saturday and Sunday were the World Cup Finals. Only competitors who qualified with a minimum number of points from the entire season can compete. About 50 teams qualified in the world and a total of 21 showed up. Most of the people in the top 20 came to compete. Scores from Saturday carry over into Sunday and after 1 round Sunday, the top 10 move on to the last rounds as the finalists. I felt it was going to be very difficult to make the top 10, but that was our goal. We would have to beat half of the best competitors around. Our placement moved around a lot during the rounds. Our placement from the 1st round to last (before the top 10) went as follows: 11 (yes, we are in it) 19 (uh oh) 12 (back in it) 10 (JUST made it!!!). We made 10th place by 0.1 points. With total score on the order of 100+, it was as close as it gets! After we made the cut, it felt good to be a finalist. In the top 10 round, we had a good freestyle and toss/fetch round and moved up 2 more places and finished in 8th!!!

The scores from the weekend are added to our point total for the entire season and we finished at #8 in the UFO World Cup standings! Click here to see our name in the final rankings!!!

Videos can be watched HD up to 1080p!

Here's videos of our two best rounds. 2nd video has us in our Halloween attire.

Here are the remaining freestyle rounds:

MACH2 Enzo - 10/16/2010- plus some other musings.

2010-10-18T21:15:00.000-07:00

Enzo got his 40th double Q this past Saturday for his MACH2. He's such an awesome little boy. Unfortunately I didn't think to bring my video camera. He had a fast and smooth jumpers run where we had to go through some scary boxes (our old weakness) and a nice standard run with a small bobble when I had to call him off of the off course aframe.

Last weekend we went to one day of an ASCA trial. He needed one more Regular leg for his Open title. At our last ASCA trial I entered him in Open and we didn't Q in either of our regular runs so I decided to just enter him in Elite for this trial. We didn't Q in Elite Gamblers but he Q'd in both Elite Regular runs with the fastest time of all heights and also Q'd and got 1st in Elite Jumpers. So he finished his RS-O and got an Elite Regular and Elite Jumpers leg. Now we're ready to try for the 2012 ASCA Agility finals in Bakersfield. Hopefully they'll have some more ASCA trials than they normally do around here.

Then there are my frustrations with USDAA. We did a USDAA trial a couple weeks, 9 runs and only two Q's. He had a bar in almost every run and was also having problems making his contacts with the higher aframe and the shorter dogwalk contact. His only Q's were in Masters Pairs and Snookers. He could have gotten a Super Q if not for the knocked #6 jump in Snoookers. Not sure if I should do performance with him instead. That would at least take care of the bars and the higher aframe but the dogwalk would still be an issue. I really would like him to run in championship for a little while though since i think he's actually fast enough to be competitive if we could just be consistent.

Tooney 8

2010-09-30T12:24:00.000-07:00

Tooney turned 8!

Crusty Classic Videos

2010-09-27T16:59:00.000-07:00

Wolfman and Weredog + Skeletor and Mr. Bones

2010-09-22T09:27:00.000-07:00

Enzo and I had some fun this past weekend. I must say, this is the best costume combination we've done. Videos coming before too long.

Video from 8/14/10

2010-08-28T20:05:00.000-07:00

Enzo's 37th double Q from a couple weeks ago. He got first place in both runs! I like running without the pressure of getting points for the invitational! I love how he's been running since we finished going for it. I must have really been holding him back.

Enzo's Invitation to the Invitational!

2010-08-08T16:33:00.001-07:00

The official invitation!

Skyhoundz Regional and USDDN Qualifier Videos

2010-07-23T17:40:00.000-07:00

I was a little behind on videos so here's the vids from our Skyhoundz Southwest Regional and USDDN West Coast Qualifier.

Enzo Skyhoundz Round 1:

Tooney Skyhoundz Round 1:

Enzo Skyhoundz Round 2:

Enzo USDDN:
(Notice new hip vaults which is still a bit of a work in progress)

Enzo Agility Videos

2010-07-22T19:24:00.001-07:00

Bought some videos from 4 Legged Flix. I love their overhead view and HD quality!

Here's Enzo's JWW from Sunday. I was going to front cross between the two jumps after the aframe but chickened out and pulled. Caused a wide turn at the 180 turn but he still got first place! I was quite suprised since both Dash and Rogue were clean.

Here's Saturday's Standard. Also 1st place!

Sunday's JWW and another 1st.

Sunday's Standard. I didn't cue the turn after the aframe much at all and then he also blasted straight off the dogwalk which messed up our line to the teeter so he hit the panel jump.

Enzo's in the Invitational!

2010-07-20T19:05:00.000-07:00

The official results were posted!

1 MACH4 Barjh Batteries Not Included REG 5,329
2 MACH3 Gulfstream's Tnt-Take No Tail MXF TQX REG 4,264
3 MACH Windsor's Enzo Ferrari OF REG 3,326
4 MACH6 Los Suenos Gravity Games MXF REG 3,089
5 MACH2 Toprock's La Femme Ewe-Nika NF REG 3,074
6 NAC MACH14 Blue Moon Shine On Willow MXF TQX REG 2,679
7 MACH2 Kandlelite's Icyhot CD RE MXF REG 2,583
8 MACH7 Add It Up OF REG 2,122
9 MACH8 Roanoak Reinflame Red Hot Chai MXF TQX REG 1,993
10 MACH2 Katch 22 Animation XF REG 1,837
11 MACH Hardins Dust Up Rinse Repeat XF REG 1,610
12 MACH5 Schiml's Denim Blue Dylin OF REG 1,583
13 MACH2 Sunnybrook Hang Ten REG 1,533
14 Granite's Fly Like The Wind VCD2 RE TDX MX MXJ MXF REG 1,450
15 MACH8 Imagineer's Rely On Me REG 1,438
16 MACH3 Renfield Rave-On MXF REG 1,392
17 MACH Heiland's Jackie D Pessoa REG 1,354
18 MACH Boedekers To Hot To Touch NF REG 1,349
19 MACH3 Windy Farms Shoo Fly RE NJP OF REG 1,349
20 MACH6 Katch Grand Cherokee XF REG 1,300
21 MACH3 Old Oaks Capt Rocky Yr Socks CD XF REG 1,272
22 MACH Catalina Pitsch Black Knight OF REG 1,257
23 MACH4 Staarry Heavens To Bessie UDX RAE MXF REG 1,248
24 CH MACH3 Agile Collinswood Razzmatazz CD XF REG 1,246
25 MACH2 Mychanceto Scoot MXF REG 1,208

We took the 4th of July weekend off. Then I went to an USDAA trial the day after the USDDN frisbee competition. Enzo got a Q in Masters Gamblers but no other Q's. He was running good but had some bar issues. He really likes to jump flat and extended at 22".

Last weekend was our first AKC trial since the qualifying period ended and Enzo. He was running great and ended getting Q's in 3 out of 4 and placed first in all 3! Now that I don't have to worry about our Q rate, I can work on handling more aggressivly and staying out in front of him which is not an easy thing to do! Should be fun for both of us!

Tooney unfortunately is still lame. She is better since she's been on the Metacam but who knows if she is actually getting better or if it's just that the drug is helping with the pain.

I'm a little behind on videos, I still have the Skyhoundz regional and the USDDN regional to post.

USDDN 2010

2010-07-10T20:40:00.000-07:00

Our USDDN 2010 this year was the first time it was not part of Wags for Wishes, which has since closed its operations for California, leaving us running a normal dog competition instead of part of a big festival. 3 years ago, the competition was 3 days. Last year it was cut to 2 days, this year just 1 day. We had to get a lot of competing done in a short time. USDDN is my favorite organization because I like the 1.5 minute toss/fetch. It's innovated and heck it's another 30 seconds I get to play with my best buddy!

This is the first time I have had to compete without Tooney, and it was depressing. She hurt something in her front left but we're not sure what. We are concerned she may be out a long time.

For our freestyle round, Enzo did great. Few drops and had some big air. In our toss/fetch round (that went with the freestyle), we did good for the average competitor, but Enzo isn't average. He should have had a score around 20, but ended up around 15-16 probably. We finished 5th overall, qualified for nationals.

In the toss / fetch only division, Enzo rocked the joint. I went into the competition trying to win the toss/fetch. Last year he finished 2nd. This year there was much stiffer competition with at least 5-6 more top tier teams, but still felt we had a chance to win. First round was good, but turned out that I only got 5 throws out and he missed 1. He got 18.5, which is quite good, but my target is 20 per round. 2nd round was the top score of the day (or close), which was 23.0. He finished with a total score of 41.5. He ended up in 2nd place. Last year I think we had 38.5 points, so he did improve and with more wind this year. I only threw 1 disc short of 40 yards out of 11 total throws and Enzo only missed 1 out of the 11, which is very good for both of us. He is qualified for nationals in this division, too.

The bulk of our frisbee season is over now. This event always signifies that we're well past the half-way point and just a few more left. 1 small competition, a regional competition and a championship competition are all that we have left. I just wish Tooney was feeling better even if she still couldn't play. I hate to see her limp.

Let's Try an Actual Blog Post!

2010-06-21T20:51:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I've posted anything. Going for the invitational has been a long, grueling but also rewarding journey. I think posting after every weekend about every AKC trial I just did would have put me over the edge for agility burnout so I just didn't post at all! We're down to the last weekend and Enzo was in 3rd place though June 3 with a pretty good lead on 5th and 6th places. I don't think it's mathmatically possible for us to get knocked out of the top 5 now even if we don't get any points this weekend. I'll refrain from celebrating until I see the final results though! But now that we're down to the end, I think it's a good time to post about our journey.

I've learned a lot in the past year. I feel a lot more confident about my handling now, I have a pretty good idea of what things I have to worry about and the things that I don't. Going through boxes has been a big problem for me and Enzo but we're getting better. I learned that it works better to decelerate and turn my shoulders in the correct direction instead of trying to run ahead and pull him towards me that way. First choice is to do a front cross to straighten him out though. I've also gotten a lot better at adjusting my strategies for Tooney and Enzo. Not having done as much trialing as I did who knows if Tooney would have been a finalist at AKC Nationals!

Enzo started out in July and August really rocking it and was even in first place for a while but then lost our aframe contact completely in the middle of August. From then until Mid-December, Enzo and I only Q'd in standard twice! Quite amazing that we were able to come back from that. He was perfect in practice but horrible in competition. In December, I decided to treat practice like competition and stopped rewarding his contacts with food and also started practicing quick releases and early releases. He's only missed 1 or 2 aframes since then and 2 or 3 dogwalks. It's getting harder and harder to get him to come to a full stop in practice but so far this strategy is working. Pretty much as long as he puts in at least 3 strides on the downside of the aframe then that's an acceptable performance.

So now just one more weekend and the wait for final results...

5 Day Super Agility/Disc Dog Fun Day Weekend Extravaganza

2010-06-01T10:25:00.000-07:00

Jenn has given up on blogging and all social avenues for communication to the masses. It's up to me to try making updates.

It was 5 days of crazy fun this weekend! Jenn competed Thursday, Friday and Monday with both dogs in agility. Sunday she competed just with Enzo. They got some Q's. Enzo is still in top 5 for AKC invitationals. I can't remember any other details.

Saturday we had the Skyhoundz southwest regional disc dog qualifier. They take the top 6 out of about 40 teams to the 2nd round. Enzo made the cut and finished 4th place overall after his 2nd round (was tied for 3rd, but lost tie breaker). I am a complete idiot, though. I threw 1 disc out of the end of the field for toss/fetch with Enzo. He made a beautiful leaping catch at something over 50 yards. Normally that would have been worth 5.5 points, but instead the score was 0 since it was out of bounds! That was the difference in 2nd place with a world championship qualifier and 4th place with no qualification. Tooney did great with only 2 drops, but had a very low score overall because the judges didn't like her I guess.

Sunday was a lot of fun at the DiscDogathon. We had spot landing, distance/accuracy, bullseye and time trial competitions. Enzo was doing agility earlier in the day and was late to the event. We snuck him in and did his rounds. He didn't do so great, partly because he was rushed in, partly because he was completely insane and was just missing discs for no real reason. He didn't win any of the events. Tooney, though, was a little pimptress. I was horrible in the spot landing and she didn't get many points. We had a drop in the time trial so we didn't do good there. She won the distance / accuracy portion and she was tied for 1st place in the bullseye and got 2nd place after losing the tie-breaker. She also got 2nd place in the overall combined scores. I think there were 74 teams competing, so that was awesome!

Last year I was disappointed because Tooney got a bee sting in the 1st round at the DiscDogathon. I felt if she didn't get stung, she would have had a chance to win the whole thing or at least do pretty well. Looks like I was spot on because she did great this year with no bee stings. She rocked it all day and had a lot of fun.

If I throw a disc over 20 yards, Tooney generally won't miss. If she catches up to the disc and gets her mouth on it, she's probably 99% catch rate. She didn't miss a single disc that she came in contact with during this competition. She can miss short throws and I can outthrow her if I'm not careful, but that's about it. Any other crap I throw she catches :)

skyhoundz local, ufo videos

2010-05-08T19:51:00.000-07:00

We had a Skyhoundz local Saturday. I went out first with Enzo and had a decent round of freestyle. More drops than I would expect but he was in the air on everything. Tooney's round of freestyle was probably her best yet (I keep saying this, I know). She had a drop in the middle of the routine. Little would I know, that would turn out to be the ONLY drop the entire day!!!! Wow!!!! 1-drop routine! About 94% catch ratio. She beat Enzo in freestyle for I think only the 2nd time ever. I don't think Enzo was upset - he said "sometimes the sun even shines on a dog's ass" (white men can't jump reference).

For toss/fetch, I knew Enzo had some ground to make up and he put up a great score of 16 points. 2nd best of the day. 2nd best to... you guessed it, Tooney! She scored a 17. Jenn got me back in shape after she told me I lost my magic with Tooney on toss/fetch and I think we rebounded well today. Enzo missed 1 disc, Tooney didn't miss any. This is the first time she beat Enzo in toss/fetch this year for me.

At the end of the day, Enzo ended up 3rd overall and Tooney ended up 2nd! Having 2 in the top 3 was pretty exciting.

Jenn competed with both dogs in toss/fetch and got 2nd place with Tooney. She was perfect in both rounds! Tooney had 1 disc that landed on her back and she turned and grabbed it before it hit the ground. Really funny stuff. Tooney made it look like it was just business as usual.

I was also part of a parody routine. Kirby did a parody of several competitors and I was one of them. She did a good job and I felt famous for about 30 seconds.

Here's videos from the UFO major a few weeks ago:

Enzo round 1

Enzo round 2

Tooney

SoCal Disc Dog Challenge (UFO Major / Long Shot)

2010-04-20T07:37:00.000-07:00

First I will start off with Sunday's long shot competition since it's quick and to the point. It's a long distance throwing competition. Enzo did agility for the day with Jenn. I offered Joel Zucker to compete with Tooney because his dog (Bailey) is out of commission right now. He agreed and did great with her. He won the A division with her!!! It was awesome and she was nearly flawless with every throw. Joel handled her perfectly and his throws were awesome. I competed in the long shot with my friend CJ's little Aussie, Sydney. Sydney isn't used to long throws, but at least she's cute as a button and has super high drive. She did great up to 35 meters, but I think she couldn't control her stride as well once she was up to that distance and speed and couldn't time the jump/catch. It was fun anyways! We made it about half way through the eliminations I think.

Tooney, Enzo and I competed in our UFO major on Saturday. This is one of the most important competitions for us this year because the UFO finals are in San Diego and we need to earn some points. Enzo is expected to earn sufficient points for the finals, so his goal is to place as high as possible (top 10 or even top 5). He was #1 before this competition, but now is #2 I think. Tooney has never qualified for the finals of any organization, but has been close. I'm really going to try my best to give her a chance to get the points to allow her to compete at the finals. Jenn didn't compete with the dogs so that they would be in tip top shape for me to earn some points!

Freestyle:
In our first round of freestyle, Enzo and Tooney both had awesome rounds. Enzo had 88% catch ratio and Tooney had 90% catch ratio. I think those are the highest catch ratio's we've had so far. A couple of people told me that Enzo doesn't seem to miss anything I throw. It's amazing how catching ability was a perceived weakness of Enzo and is now an apparent strength. That boy can catch! Tooney has always been a great catching dog as long as my throws are solid and there isn't a lot of wind. It's expected of her :) Enzo made the cut for the 2nd round and had a great 2nd round and scored a little higher than the first round. Tooney didn't make the cut, but as usual, was right on the edge. Videos will be up soon probably.

Toss & fetch:
Enzo did great and had one of the top scores for the first round and made the cut to the 2nd round. This was the first time we've made the cut in toss/fetch for UFO! In his 2nd round, he did almost as good and finished with a good score. Enzo has tied or beat Tooney every competition this year in t/f for me. He is averaging over 10 points a round so far! I threw poorly for Tooney. Even though she caught everything, I was short on most of the throws by about a yard, which made our total score very low. I was disappointed in how I threw because I knew Tooney could win that division, but I just didn't have "it" for whatever reason. One thing that makes me feel good is to look back and realize it was her FREESTYLE that bailed us out, not our toss and fetch. This has been a recurring theme lately. Jenn said I need to tighten up our toss/fetch again. It seems so strange to me that I could be struggling in t/f with Tooney, but apparently I am. We're doing average or even above average, but she should be in the top 10% every competition. She's doing fine, it's all my fault. Jenn said I need to throw an extra round of t/f with her every week. I normally just practice t/f with her about 3x/month on average.

At the end of the day, Enzo ended up 4th place overall behind 3 world champions. If he keeps this pace up, I'm going to start to expect him to win every competition! Tooney ended up 12 place, which is close to the target I was hoping for. Tooney now has 62 points, which is a record for her already. I really think she is going to make the finals!!! Enzo has well over 100 points now, so he's already qualified!

AKC Nationals Continued

2010-04-01T20:07:00.000-07:00

Saturday was the start of the Nationals runs which counted for getting into finals. Jeff helped a lot by bringing Enzo and Tooney back and forth from the trailer. They seem to get better rest in the trailer vs crated at the site. Standard was first. When Jeff brought Tooney, he said she pulled all the way to the barn like she knew exactly where she was going. She's such a smart girl. I could tell she was ready to go because she was actually excited about doing the practice jump and tugging. Normally she thinks the practice jump is pointless.

The standard course had some tricky spots but looked quite doable for me and my dogs.
Round 1 Standard Course Map

Tooney had the run of her life in this round! She ran her little fluffy butt off. Probably the fastest run she's ever had! She was awesome!

Enzo also had a really good run but unfortunately he crashed the double jump near the end of the run. It almost seemed like he didn't see the jump or didn't notice it was a double until the last second :( After his run I asked Jeff what his time was and Tooney actually beat his time by about .6 seconds! The fluffy girl really was fast! She's never beat Enzo by that much when he's had a smooth run. Tooney ended up placing 14th in Standard.

In round 2 JWW, there were some tricky spots. A weird push from jump 4 to 5, and then the ending had some difficult lines.
Round 2 JWW Course Map
Tooney ran clean and reasonably fast. With Enzo I was worried about getting the front cross between jumps 12 and 13 but I decided to go for it and at least try since this was his best chance at getting into challengers. Unfortunately I couldn't get there and aborted at the last second but not soon enough and he took the off course jump. Tooney placed a lot lower in this round but her cumulative score still had her in 14th place. Since they were taking 13 into the finals this was a pretty good place to be in after two rounds.

Sunday morning was the Hybrid round. It was an easier course than the previous days but it was a course that people handled in a lot of different ways which is always fun. I decided to wrap to the right on jump 3, rear crossed the triple, and then did a serp from 14-16 and wrapped around the outside of 16. I decided it would be better to let my dogs stay on the same lead instead of the shorter path of bringing them between 15 and 16. Not really sure which way is faster...
Hybrid Round 3 Course Map

Enzo ran first and was clean. He was amped up and it was a wild ride. He was really fast but was skidding out in some places and had a few wide turns. The worst was probably between jumps 2 and 3 and then going from the triple to the weave poles. He ended up placing 22nd. Placed above quite a few dogs that were in the finals. I think you can hear when he barks at me in the video too. He rarely does that.

Tooney ran towards the end and was clean. Watch her aframe in the video. Crazy, she landed way low in the yellow. After her run she was in 11th but we still had to wait for 40 or so more dogs to go. She dropped down to 13th and we just had to wait for the results to be finalized. Hung around for a while and then finally figured out where the finals running order was posted. Hooray Tooney was in!!! Couldn't believe that she actually made it. There was so much competition in the 16" class this year. She actually only beat the 14th place dog by 0.02 Seconds!

The whole getting our shirts for finals was an experience. They wanted to make sure that everyone got a shirt that they could fit into so they allocated a certain number of each size for all the jump heights. They brought each jump height into a room, lined everyone up and then told you what size you were getting and to try it on. Luckily I got a small. The whole thing was strange and elementary schoolish. and it took forever!

After getting my shirt I went back to the trailer to get something to eat. By the time I went back they were just starting the small dog walkthrough! Ack! I had already studied the course and had a plan luckily. The course was pretty straightforward and probably the easiest of the weekend. I just knew that I really had to watch Tooney in all of the front crosses to make sure she didn't run behind me to take an off course obstacle. I actually wasn't nervous and was just thrilled to make it there. Making finals at AKC nationals was the last goal that I had for Tooney that we hadn't achieved so it felt great.

Finals Course Map

She had a great run. Awesome contacts. Somewhere along the line she developed this great teeter and I never really noticed until this weekend! I did have to fight to get her in on the front crosses like I thought but we got through clean! Lost some time in the turn from 15 to 16 because she looked at the dogwalk. Probably my positioning could have been better too but I wanted to make sure I was in a place where I could get in her face. After everyone ran, we ended up in 7th place! Got a nice ribbon and a sash. Here's the picture that I had jeff take with my right right before we jumped in the truck and got on the road.

Here's her finals video:

AKC Nationals Day 1

2010-03-30T19:04:00.000-07:00

Wow, where to begin...From the beginning I guess! So we made the long drive out to Tulsa. Got to the site around 8ish on Thurday. It was almost 9 by the time we got the trailer set up and then my crates and stuff. We were starving and called around until we found a BBQ place that was open. Hooray for ribs, brisket and smoked chicken!

Friday we started with the ISC classes. Tooney ran at 18" since she's small enough to make the cutoff and Enzo ran at 16". The ISC JWW course was really tough. At first glance we were all like really?? yeah right. Here's a link to the course
ISC JWW
I walked four front crosses into a rear cross/threadle or a possible 5th front cross. With Tooney I was late on the fourth front cross and she went off course. With Enzo, I had to bail on the third front cross and got through with rear crosses somehow. Both nailed the rear cross into a threadle! well Tooney had a bar down but she came through between the jumps. Then there was a long run into a send to the backside of the jump. I ran through with Tooney and front crossed which caused her to go wide. I sent Enzo to the back side, and he turned really tight but knocked the bar. Even with me not running my plan, Enzo still ended up with a really good time and would have been in 9th place if the bar didn't come down.

The ISC standard course was a lot more reasonable although it had some tight spots too.
ISC Standard
Tooney didn't read the turn over jump 16 and ended up backjumping. Enzo had another nice run but knocked the second jump. I think I said something to him while he was over the bar. His time would have put him in 10th without the bar.

CA ended up winning the state team tournament so that was cool. There was no final run off this year like they've had in the past.

To be continued in the next post... Videos will probably be posted on Friday since I have the day off. Here are the videos from Friday:

Enzo:

Tooney:

Enzo world championship qualified, Tooney almost!

2010-03-22T07:30:00.001-07:00

This weekend we had our AWI (Ashley Whippet Invitation) qualifier. People from California, Arizona, Nevada, Colorado, Washington and New York came. We also had appearances from Indiana's Tony Hoard and Rory (from America's Got Talent) and Alex Stein (one of the founders of disc doggin'). The event consisted of 1 round of freestyle and 1 round of toss/fetch. They combine those scores and take the top 15 to perform a 2nd round of frestyle. The top 5 get an invitation to the World Championships in Chicago. With over 40 entries, making the cut would be hard enough, let alone the top 5.

Enzo and I went out and performed our freestyle as a gangsta and pimp. I wore a flat-billed hat, baggy shorts and a giant frisbee-clock hanging from my neck (Flava Flav style). The clock was Jenn's idea - thanks home girl! Enzo wore his pimp costume that my mom made! The routine was solid and went over well with the crowd. I got a lot of good feedback on the theme. I am super happy with our routine for 2010. Flow is great and Enzo has incredible athleticism. I also have some throws that are quite difficult and impressive looking. Here's Enzo's first round:

Tooney had a great first round of freestyle and looked as cute as ever. My throws were right on target and she only had about 3 drops. After watching her routine back, I really like how it looks now. I used to just think it was cute and fun, but now I see some great athleticism out of Tooney. She never stops running and can catch almost anything I throw! She makes most of my throws look right on target because she understands how to adjust her stride really well (thanks to agility along with natural ability I'm sure). Our routine flows REALLY good and I have a wide range of throws. Here's her first round:

After Enzo's first round, I figured he just needed a solid toss and fetch and he'd make the cut to top 15. Enzo had an average round of toss/fetch with 9.5. Tooney had a below average round of t/f for her, but matched Enzo's score. They announced the cut to the top 15 and in 7th place they said Jeff Hill and... Tooney?!?!?! What!!! Tooney made the cut!!!!!!!!!!! I am so proud of her! Usually it is her toss/fetch that pushes her up in the standings, but this time it was freestyle! Then in 5th place was Enzo!

After the initial excitement, I realized I had to prepare to do 2 rounds of freestyle almost back to back and perform at a high level to keep Enzo in the top 5 and keep Tooney in the top 10. They both had awesome 2nd rounds just before it got dark out. They announced the final order and the placements stayed the same. 7th and 5th! At the event, I felt Enzo's 1st round was better, but watching the videos back, I thought the 2nd round looked better. We got slightly better scores in the 1st round. Tooney's 2nd round video didn't come out, but we got Enzo's:

Now for the big decision... are we going to Chicago? You betcha! It's not a final decision, but Jenn and I are confident that we will go. We have made a decision that if we travel far for a disc dog competition this year, it will be Chicago for the AWI finals!

I really wish I would have started Tooney in frisbee earlier. She could have accomplished great things early on. It is my fault and a silly mistake. I never had any faith she could do it and felt she didn't have the athleticism, focus or drive for it. As it turns out, these characteristics that make her great at frisbee. I was completely wrong and I will always regret it. Jenn and I are going to enjoy little Fluffasaurus and her awesome frisbee skills as long as possible and have decided we will definitely not be getting a new puppy until Tooney has decided she's had enough of frisbee, giving her the full dedication and attention she deserves! Based on her current performance, we think that won't be for a long time!!!

UFO Vegas update and another double q

2010-03-15T08:40:00.001-07:00

Saturday was the 3rd annual UFO in Las Vegas. Enzo won the event 2 years ago and Tooney won the event last year. This year there were more people from SoCal at the event hoping to earn some points for the UFO finals in San Diego. We left Saturday morning, drove 4 hours, competed, then drove back so Jenn can compete in agility Sunday. There is 1 word to sum up this event, W-I-N-D-Y. They nearly called the event half way through as everything seemed to be blowing away. When we were leaving the event, the weather report said it was currently steady wind at 33mph. Where we were was very exposed and I would expect it was actually windier where we were. Onto the results...

The freestyle scores were all pretty low and there was little variation in scores from top to bottom due to the wind. Everybody struggled. Enzo (as a pimp) and I (as a wanna-be gangsta) went out and put on a good freestyle routine to "Pretty Fly for a White Guy". The costume/theme went over really well and people seemed to get a kick out of it. I plan to do this theme more throughout the year, including next week at the AWI qualifier. Enzo ended up having the 2nd best t/f score and got 2nd overall in the open division and earned more UFO points! Tooney did GREAT in freestyle despite having her little tootsies wrapped up to protect her pads. She posted a goose egg in toss/fetch, but I can't blame her. Out of the 18 teams in open, only 4 got points in t/f! 1 team got 3 catches, Enzo got 2 catches and 2 other teams got 1 catch each. I think Enzo is the current leader in the UFO standings. That won't last long, but take it when you can get it!

I doubled as a judged as I have done at every Vegas competition the past 3 years. The way it worked was that I judged everybody else but myself in the "sequences and flow" category. When I went up to compete, another person judged me in that category and used the scores I gave to other people as a reference to score me. He was able to compare how I perfomed to how others performed and was able to pick a fair score for me.

Next week is AWI qualifiers, so I look forward to that! Then we're off to Oklahoma for AKC nationals!

Jenn went to an AKC trial on Sunday and got a double Q with Enzo. He got 1st place in both runs. Tooney got a Q in jumpers.

(Jenn typing here) Enzo was smoking in standard, just really driving over his contacts while still collecting to hit them. He had a pretty good time even though his table was slow, probably 4-5 seconds before he sat. His JWW run was nice and smooth. The JWW run had a tough pull to the weaves and then you needed to rear cross to get to the other side because it was a sharp 180 turn to the next jump. Both Tooney and Enzo did this really well. I don't rear cross the weaves much especially when it's that severe so I'm glad they didn't hesitate. Tooney's JWW run was maybe a little slow for her but she was paying attention really well. In Standard, she was faster but we got a two off courses. The one part I probably should have planned something different for her than for Enzo. The other part I ended up doing differently when I ran Enzo. She hit her running dogwalk though which is most important for her at this point right before nationals. I feel pretty good about our preparedness for nationals right now. We're ready!!

Enzo battles addiction; frisbee and agility updates

2010-03-10T08:20:00.000-08:00

Enzo has an addiction. And we're not talking about frisbee (more on that later). It's citrus. Yes, Enzo is addicted to citrus fruit. Enzo is not a 'food hound' like our other dogs. He likes treats, steak and chicken but isn't going bonkers for it. He's not even going to beg for it. We can be eating steak and Enzo won't beg for any. The other dogs are practically climbing on top of us trying to get the food. As soon as we start cutting some citrus fruit, he won't leave us alone. He becomes a shark, too, snapping at the fruit as we try to give it to him. He is one peculiar fella. His favorite? He loves oranges off the tree, but his absolute favorite is pummelos (like a giant grapefruit for those not familiar). He likes everything about them including the nasty white husk material just under the peel.

Now on to Enzo's 2nd favorite thing - frisbee. We had our first competition last weekend and he did great! He posted the top toss and fetch score of the day, which is so impressive for him since that is his nemesis (sort of like the A-frame for him in agility). There were 60 teams total with 27 in the open division! He ended up placing and earned some UFO points that will go a long way this year. The UFO finals are in San Diego, so Enzo just needs to do his thing to get the points required to qualify. UFO competitions are going to be crazy here in SoCal with the finals being local. Poor Tooney wore her pads down in the competition because it was wet out. It didn't impact her in the competition and she finished top 10, but she may be out for next weekend :(

We are going to Vegas for the 3rd straight year next weekend for another UFO competition. Enzo won the competition 2 years ago and Tooney won it last year (behind an insane toss/fetch score).

I'm pretty excited about the frisbee season because I'm in better physical shape than I have been in 2 years. The nerve problem in my arm seems to have mostly healed (after a year and a half!) and I'm able to compete 100%. Last year I had to throw left-handed most of the year for toss/fetch. The only problem with my arm is I can't practice very much because it starts tingling, burning, etc after too much activity. For a single competition, I can go full out. I can't do long distance, either. It messes me up bad, so 40-45 yards is all I'm trying to throw right now and I can do that with little irritation. My hip problem (again from almost 2 years ago) isn't anywhere near 100%, but I can compete and it doesn't hurt nearly as much as last year. I'm not getting much in the way of the numbness/tingling this year thankfully. It mostly just starts aching a if I do too much. It's been a long time since it's been bad enough that it was difficult for me to walk.

For agility Enzo is still in the same mode. AKC, AKC, AKC and then more AKC. When he's not at an AKC competition, more AKC. He's still in the top 5 Aussies in the country and needs to stay there for another 3 months and he'll be invited to the AKC invitationals in Long Beach!

Report Date: 03/11/2010
THE AMERICAN KENNEL CLUB

December 2010 AKC Agility Invitational
for Australian Shepherds
Qualifying Period Starting July 01, 2009 and ending June 30, 2010

Events Processed Through Friday, February 26, 2010

Rank Name Class Formula Value
1 MACH3 Barjh Batteries Not Included REG 3,351
2 MACH2 Gulfstream's Tnt-Take No Tail MXF REG 2,368
3 NAC MACH13 Blue Moon Shine On Willow MXF TQX REG 1,988
4 MACH6 Los Suenos Gravity Games MXF REG 1,961
5 MACH Windsor's Enzo Ferrari OF REG 1,956
6 MACH2 Toprock's La Femme Ewe-Nika REG 1,617
7 MACH7 Roanoak Reinflame Red Hot Chai MXF TQX REG 1,382
8 MACH6 Add It Up OF REG 1,365
9 MACH Kandlelite's Icyhot CD RE MXF REG 1,322
10 MACH2 Katch 22 Animation XF REG 1,310
11 Hardins Dust Up Rinse Repeat MX MXJ XF REG 1,118
12 Granite's Fly Like The Wind VCD2 RA TDX MX MXJ MXF REG 1,020
13 MACH8 Imagineer's Rely On Me REG 988
14 MACH2 Windy Farms Shoo Fly RE NJP OF REG 908
15 Old Oaks Katie Bar The Door VCD1 MX MXJ XF REG 898
16 MACH5 Schiml's Denim Blue Dylin OF REG 887
17 MACH11 Whimsical Whirlwind Marni XF REG 868
18 MACH3 Old Oaks Capt Rocky Yr Socks CD XF REG 850
19 MACH Catalina Pitsch Black Knight NF REG 815
20 MACH3 Renfield Rave-On MXF REG 799
21 MACH Sunnybrook Hang Ten REG 798
22 MACH Fly Away's Call The Ball XF REG 788
23 MACH2 Aussie CDX XF REG 756
24 MACH3 Staarry Heavens To Bessie UDX RAE MXF REG 745
25 MACH Simply Sydney XF REG 731

MACH Enzo!

2010-01-31T21:52:00.001-08:00

Today Enzo got his 20th double Q to finish his MACH! He had an awesome JWW run which he ran in 6.8 yds/s and got 2nd place. The standard course was really tough with two off course tunnel possibilities and then a long run into a tunnel dogwalk discrimination. I overhandled some parts but got through clean. Enzo's contacts were really nice too. Fast but went to the bottom. Even with the slow table he still got 2nd place. So proud of the little boy and so happy that his contacts are good now.

Here's the video

Cute that he had no idea what the victory lap was about! We got him a turkey bacon sandwich from Starbucks on the way home and then a mandarin from the tree when we got home. Enzo loves citrus fruit!

Oh and thanks to Jeff for getting up at an ungodly hour to support us and videotape!!

Blogging Slacker!

2010-01-22T17:58:00.000-08:00

Guess I haven't been too good about updates here. Enzo's contacts are still holding up although maybe not quite as fast as I would like so I'm working on speed in practice now. Double Q's are coming a lot easier now and hopefully we're catching in the Invitational point standings. He's earned about 550 points since mid-December. Last weekend we trialed 3 days and Enzo Q'd in 5 out of 6 runs 2nd place to Dash in 4 of the runs and 1st place in one run. He got his 18th and 19th double Q's on Friday and Saturday. Went for his MACH for the first time last Sunday but he took an off course tunnel. Totally my fault for not decelerating. I ran Tooney after Enzo and at least managed to execute my plan properly for her.

This weekend our trial got rained out. The rain was done by the weekend but the fields were too wet so they wouldn't let us run on them.

Here's the videos from last weekend.

Enzo JWW (1/17/10):

Tooney JWW (1/17/10):

Enzo Standard (1/17/10):

Tooney Standard (1/17/10):

Also here's some videos from New Years weekend that I never posted on here. He was flying in JWW that day and got 1st place.

Enzo Standard (12/31/09):

Tooney Standard (12/31/09):

Enzo JWW (12/31/09):

Crazy week of training

2010-01-12T08:41:00.000-08:00

The New Year started with my 2nd annual Jam Camp. Every year it's 2-3 days of training with some of the best frisbee freestylers around. Intended primarily for human freestyle, but it is very helpful for disc doggers. There were loads of world champions and people who invented most of the throws and tricks we use today. Almost as many instructors as students! Some of my favorite instructors are Dave Lewis, Stork, Dave Schiller and Ron Watson.

After that long weekend I was completely worn out, but just a few days later on Wednesday I had my private lesson with Ron Watson. He went over all sorts of different concepts, throws and tricks. It was about 4 hours of instruction.

Then we had a group seminar with Ron Watson the following weekend, which was another 7 hours of instruction. I'm physically and mentally exhausted.

I can't even say specifically what I've learned because it was just an overwhelming amount of information. I will say that it was mostly just rehash of things I already knew or was at least familiar with. It was fun and probably down the road I'll pull something out that I learned.

Progress!

2009-12-22T10:07:00.000-08:00

Well, I read Rachael Sander's contact article in Clean Run last month and she mentioned that one of the reasons dogs will be good in practice and then miss contacts in competition is when you reward contacts too much in practice. So the past few weeks I've been having Enzo practice contacts without rewarding him with food at the bottom. I had thought about doing this before but was worried it might actually degrade his contact performance. It does cause him to run off in practice on occasion now, but that gives me the opportunity to mark it and have him try again. I'm also starting to mix in some early releases in practice.

Overall it seems to be working. Saturday he ran off through dogwalk contact without any thought of stopping so I marked it with a hey and had him wait for a second. I think that got him a little worried because he ended creeping down the aframe while looking back at the judge. The judge was raising his arms for a knocked bar so that may have been part of his worries. He actually came to a full 2on/2off stop though! I praised him really excitedly. Maybe he was worried the judge was going to get him if he didn't do what he was supposed to like he used to do with the instructor in herding.

Sunday, he was still a little slower on the contacts than normal but not anywhere near as bad as the aframe on Saturday. He didn't quite stop but he was at least coming all the way down.

Both Tooney and Enzo were 3 for 4 this past weekend which is great. Enzo got 3rd in JWW on Saturday, 1st in JWW on Sunday, 2nd in standard. Tooney got 1st in Standard! She is really rocking standard courses lately with her running dogwalk. Enzo fell out of the top 5 for the invitational this past week so hopefully we have gotten to the point where we can start Qing in Standard consistently again. Hopefully by AKC nationals we will have figured it all out to get his speed is up to where it should be while still running clean! We were there back in June and July of this year!

Pictures from USDAA Nationals

2009-12-10T19:51:00.001-08:00

I love the wild look in Enzo's eyes in this pic. He looks too cute in most of his agility pictures. This one captures how I feel he must look like when he's running!

I also got a beautiful watercolor print of Enzo in the weaves from Doghouse Arts but it's too big for our scanner!

Contacts!

2009-12-07T10:40:00.000-08:00

I've been struggling a bit with Enzo's contacts lately, especially the aframe. At the three day trial last weekend he missed all 3 aframes plus 1 dogwalk and 1 teeter. On the second day and third day I made sure to mark his missed contacts.

After reading the Rachael Sanders article about contacts in this months Clean Run, I realized that I fall into the category of rewarding too much in practice. So all last week I stopped giving treats for his 2on-2off. Once I stopped giving him treats, then sometimes he would either not stop or stop and releases himself which he was never doing in practice before. This gave me the opportunity to mark the wrong behavior in practice.

I think this new strategy may be helping... at least for now. Even though he didn't come to a complete stop, Enzo put three strides on the downside of the aframe both days this past weekend which he hasn't done in competition since before USDAA nationals. He did get called on his teeter on Saturday because his front feet left before the board hit the ground and his back feet pushed the teeter down. It was a borderline performance that sometimes gets called and sometimes doesn't. Sunday he got all of his contacts but slid off the table. He tried really hard to hang on but ended up tipping over the edge. So still no standard Q's but at least I feel a lot better about his contacts now. Tooney had a good weekend with 3 out of 4 Q's. She may pass up Enzo in points soon if I don't turn things around soon.

My next step is to practice quick/early releases from contacts in practice. I will try mixing it up with having him hold them longer.

I'm also doing the ground work for using the PVC box to train running aframe. Not sure that I will actually use it on the aframe with Enzo but I'll see how the ground work goes.

USDAA Nationals

2009-11-26T18:20:00.000-08:00

I finallly got videos posted from USDAA Nationals. I haven't really been as into posting lately for whatever reason. I was happy with how both dogs ran at Nationals. Tooney did the best that she could. She was less than a second out from making it to the finals for Performance Speed Jumping and her team did pretty well but needed better snookers runs to make it into the finals. Enzo was fast and intense and really paying attention but had aframe contact and bar issues. Here's video from some of our best runs from the weekend.

Enzo:

Tooney:

Mental Management

2009-10-29T21:55:00.000-07:00

So I've determined that I need to brush up on my mental management. Going for the invitational has put me in a state of mind where I'm too worried about whether or not enzo Q's in each run and I've psyched myself out in standard runs with him for no good reason. He's been good on his contacts and I should trust him and focus on what I need to do to get him through the courses and stop worrying about the results. I also need to stop rushing and make sure that I stay in contact with him. I'm re-listening to my Lanny Basham CD's now and hopefully I've be able to get it together by USDAA nationals! Oddly enough I actually feel a lot less pressure about that than a local AKC trial at this point. I guess that's a good thing but that might change as it gets closer. Mentally I need to focus stop thinking and talking about what we did wrong and focus on how to do things right. So as part of that I'm only going to write about the good things here.

Tooney did really well at the 4 day trial in Northern CA. She got one double Q and 1 Q each of the other 3 days, she placed 1st in all of the runs that she Q'd in except 1. Enzo had one really awesome JWW run where he got 1st and 46 points which is definitely the most he's ever gotten for a jumpers run. I haven't gotten around to posting most of the video but I put that one up.

Last weekend Enzo got first in JWW on Saturday on a really tough course and Tooney Q'd in JWW on Sunday. Oh and Enzo hit all of his contacts :-)

Enzo is 2009 D2iSC Champion!

2009-10-10T10:46:00.001-07:00

Enzo has just been named the 2009 D2iSC (Disc Dogs in Southern California) Champion! It's an annual award given to the disc dog team that earns the most points based on your finishes in your best 3 out of the 4 major competitions hosted here in southern California. Enzo and I beat out over 80 other teams to get this award! It will be presented at our holiday get-together.

Enzo also finished in 5th place with Jenn due to their great toss and fetch finishes this year. That's impressive considering they don't do freestyle. Freestyle teams earn more points.

Tooney and I finished in 12th place!

Here's a couple pics from this year of my bestest buddy in the whole world. And yes, I love him so much, I bring myself to say "bestest". I can't help it:

UFO Major / Crusty Classic Weekend part 1!!!

2009-10-09T10:15:00.000-07:00

What a fun but exhausting weekend. It was the windiest competition of the year, so some of the rounds weren't as good as maybe they could have been. Jenn was also recovering from the flu. It was the biggest UFO and Crusty Classic in California history! Both days ran really late. This was the last disc competition for a long time for me, so I had to make the best of it!

Saturday was the UFO major. In intermediate division, Jenn got 3rd with Enzo with I think only 6 points. Yeah... the wind was THAT bad. There were probably more scores of 0 than not. Tooney didn't compete with Jenn because she's at the age we need to start resting her a bit. For my first round of freestyle with Enzo, the wind was really, really, really strong. He did great and after the 1st round, he ended up in 5th place. His toss/fetch was very solid at 7.5, but I only got 3 throws off - it was my fault, sorry Ebby! He missed the t/f top 10 cut by only 0.5 point. For the 2nd round of freestyle, Enzo was AWESOME! I knew since he had a solid t/f score that our placement should move up. They announced the awards for the top 3 freestyle - I figured we had a REALLY good chance of being in the top 3 - no mention of Enzo. Wow, that's odd..... Then, announcing the open overall top 4 (t/f + both rounds freestyle) and Enzo was also nowhere to be found... I thought that was strange, but that's the way it goes sometimes. No big deal!

SCORING ERROR!?!?! Yes, on Sunday, they found 2 major errors in the scoring calculations on the spreadsheet. After the new calculations, Enzo was 2nd in freestyle and 4th in the overall! Then, after yet ANOTHER mistake, Enzo moved to 3rd in the freestyle... whatever the placements are, he did good!

Enzo's 1st round freestyle UFO Major. Notice at the beginning, the disc almost blew off my finger and I started laughing since I recovered! That's a very risky and difficult move to do, especially with the wind, but I don't back down from a challenge. After my round, friends surprised me by running out and throwing stuffed bananas at me because I dress up in yellow. We didn't get it on video, though.

Enzo kicking butt for his 2nd round:

Little Tooney had 2 decent rounds in freestyle. It was really windy and she struggles more than Enzo in the wind. She doesn't have the quick reactions that he does to recover when the disc moves with the wind. As expected, she didn't make the cut. However, in toss/fetch, nothing can stop her, even with the brutal wind... at least I thought... In the 1st round of t/f, she was great. She ended up in 1st place overall with 12 points. I was stoked, and I figured we'd probably win it because she's so good. For our 2nd round of t/f, the event was running really late and I was the last person to go since she was in first place (they run last to first). I had my sun glasses on because I didn't think I'd need to bring my regular glasses with me. I couldn't see a thing and as each competitor went, it was darker and darker out. Unfortunately, for our second round, we were only average, and yes, I blame it on the fact it was nearly pitch black out. I don't normally make excuses, but it was a huge disadvantage. She got 9 points in the second round. It caused me more of a problem than her probably. I couldn't see the lines on the field at all. I think we ended up in 5th place in t/f. I think she ended up 13th overall in the open division, which is actually really good considering how big the competition was!!!

Tooney's round of freestyle: