Our frisbee club hosted a USDDN competition this past weekend. There were 4 categories: novice toss and fetch, super open toss and fetch, open freestyle, and super open freestyle. The super open categories were for those competing for a spot at World's. Novice and open were for us kids (or dogs) who didn't know what they were doing. Freestyle is the really neat competition, where people have a routine and they do all sorts of tricks and stunts. Toss and fetch is just that, human stands behind a line, throws a frisbee, and dog retrieves it. Points are based on how far away the dog catches the frisbee.
Noone was signing up for the novice toss and fetch, so Duke's chances were looking pretty good. At the last minute, about 5 more people signed up in novice. Chances...not so good.
In the first round, Duke did great, caught almost all the frisbees. According to the announcer, my strategy was to throw lots of shorter tosses that are easier for the pup to catch. Longer catches give more points, so most people throw as far as they can. Little did the crowd realize....I was throwing as far as my little chicken arms could throw. You also get an extra half point if the pup makes the catch with all 4 paws off the ground, or within a smaller column in the middle of the field. Duke got one of the extra half points on all of his catches. Yay Duke.
Then came round two. Where I sucked a big one and couldn't throw. When the frisbee goes sailing straight down, there's only so much poor Duke could do.
Duke still got third, and I'm happy, even though we got beaten by a 10 year old and her 9 month old dog. First place was a ringer though. She could throw, and her dog could catch. ;)
One person who flew in to compete was Matt DiAno, the reigning World champ for the past 3 years. We've got a pretty small club, and our club loves him, so I got dragged over to meet him a couple times. Then he saw me throw, and realized I needed all the help I could get. Unfortunately, even he couldn't help my throw. Sad, but true.
We had a professional photographer out there, and here are some pictures he took of Duke. Don't mind the silly asian in the background looking confused. On that throw, I had sent Duke behind me, and as he ran out, he jumped up and headbutted the frisbee as I was throwing it. I was asking him what he was doing. As usual, he just ignored me.
Professional pictures
If you've got time to kill, here's a link to the pictures I took. Beware though, there's about 200 of them.
These are some of my favs:
The last picture is Matt DiAno and his beautiful and amazing Maggie.
No comments:
Post a Comment