First place!

Last weekend (July 23-25th) was the Reliant Dog show, and the pups and I were there all 3 days. Duke was doing frisbee demos, Coral was doing Rally, and I was their chauffer and buyer of treats.

Duke was scheduled for one demo on Friday, and two each on Saturday and Sunday. That's 5 demos in 3 days for my lazy beast! The Friday demo went great! He did awesome, and wasn't distracted by the crowds or noise at all. Saturday morning, he landed weird a couple times. We think it was just carpet burn on his precious little toes, because we checked him afterwards, and nothing seemed to be injured. Either way, I pulled him from the afternoon demo just to let him rest. On Sunday, I could tell he was holding back a bit, so I kept the throws REALLY short, and slowed down the pace a bit. His paw may have still been bothering him, or he could have just been tired. The Reliant dog show is crazy, lots of noise and commotion, dogs everywhere, people everywhere, and my pups were there from 8:30 until almost 5 all 3 days. The poor pups were tired!

Coral was entered in Rally Novice on Friday and Sunday. I had actually taken her to Reliant on Wednesday so I could get my crate there, and let Coral check the place out a little. I never take Coral to places as crazy or with as many dogs as Reliant, so I knew she'd be overwhelmed, so I thought I'd give her a chance to see the area before the craziness started. I grabbed my treats, and we practiced right by our ring, and she did great. During the actual competition, treats aren't allowed, but you can train and practice with treats right up until you enter.

On Friday, Rally started at 11:30, but I knew we had 80 dogs in Rally Excellent and Rally Advanced before us, so I knew we wouldn't be going for a while. What I didn't realize, was that "a while" would be 5 hours. I took Coral out of the crate several times throughout the day to practice, and she did great each time. Until it was her time to compete. She was tired by then. And since she hadn't actually been in the ring before, she wanted to sniff and check everything out. For the first few signs, she didn't pay attention to me, and just wanted to sniff everything. I did get her refocused on me, and she did great the rest of the run. We pulled off a 90/100, which was sufficient to qualify for her first leg. (You need a 70/100 to qualify. Once you get 3 legs, you get your Rally Novice title.) Not bad for her first Rally run ever. Especially since I didn't get serious about practicing until 2 weeks before the show.

Coral got a break on Sat, she wasn't entered in the competition, but I brought her to Reliant anyway to practice. Good thing I hadn't entered her! She was SO distracted! And I got frustrated with her, which only made her shut down more. Oy vey.

Sunday was a fresh start. A very stressful fresh start. Duke's second demo and Coral's rally run were going to be almost at the same time. I kept running back and forth between the two areas so check how things were going. I ended up running outside to let the dogs potty, changing clothes really quick, grabbing Coral to practice for a couple minutes before her run, doing Coral's run, running back to the frisbee area to crate her and grab Duke, doing Duke's demo, throwing him back in the crate, and then running back to the Rally area to see how Coral scored. A very out of breath, but excited me was practically flipping cartwheels when I saw that Coral got a 96/100, and that no other dog had even scored a 90! My puppyface got first place! One more leg, and she gets letters after her name, yay Coral! Not a perfect run, and I definitely see where I messed up (I gave her the wrong command to back out of my way on inside turns!) but overall, I'm superhappy with how we did.




Her prize for her awesomeness? A stuffed pink elephant squeaky toy. She was so happy!

And I got her a first place cookie. Since Duke is spoiled too, he got a watermelon cookie.

Oh! And to make things even more exciting, guess who was sitting RIGHT in front of the Rally ring? Coral's foster mom, Cathy! Cathy is all sorts of knowledgeable about Danes, Agility, Rally, and Conformation, so I was all sorts of nervous to have her watching. She teased me about being so loud, but hey, my puppyface was paying attention. I think part of the reason the other dogs didn't so well was because earlier in the day, someone ran a dog in heat, and there were drops of blood in the ring, which really distracted a lot of dogs. Especially male dogs. Especially the intact male dogs. But not my spayed female puppyface with the really loud handler! :)

The cutest little carnivore

Beef ribs for everyone tonight, including Miss Heidi.



Miss Heidi had a full day today!

First we went to the frisbee club meeting with Duke. Duke and I got one of the member of the year awards. I think that means they figured out we're big suckers and will show up and help as much as we can. Heidi came with us because we were going to a Superbowl party afterwards, and I didn't know how long we'd be gone, and if she could hold it the entire time. On the upside, she met lots of people today at both the frisbee club meeting and at the party.

Duke decided to be annoyingly interested in the food table at the party, so I put the dogs in stays while people were eating. Heidi did amazingly well, considering I haven't done more than a 3 minute long stay with her before. First I had her in a sit/stay, which she broke twice, but that wasn't bad considering it was a new place with lots of people, and she was in the stay for about 15 minutes. Then I put her in a down/stay on her pillow for about half an hour. She broke that once when more people came in, but stayed put the rest of the time. It was so hard for her to be good though, because people were talking to her, and her little curly tail was wagging like crazy.

After people were pretty much done eating though, she made her rounds, going from lap to lap for loving.

When we got home, everyone got beef ribs for dinner. Heidi's molars were starting to get some plaque buildup, and beef ribs are one of the easiest ways to clean teeth.

Duke really does play frisbee, I swear!

In slow motion:























Proof that I'm insane:




Insanity from a different angle:

Frisbeedogging--Ur doing it wrong

Mojo and Karma are doing it right though.

Why we use Jawz frisbees, by Duke

This is what club frisbees look like after two minutes of play. Two minutes.


This is what a Jawz looks like after 8 months of play. They cost $15, versus $1.50 for the club frisbees, but I think we can all agree that it's well worth the cost.

FrisbeeDog demo yesterday

Working with Duke on new tricks and frisbee jumps.....good idea.
Thinking I can show them off at the next frisbee demo....dumb idea. Especially when the demo is outside at noon on a 100 degree day. Duke wasn't interested in playing. His speed decreases exponentially as it gets hotter, and he's not exactly a speed demon to begin with. Duke and I have only been practicing lately after 8 or 9 pm when it cools down a bit. He even has a snazzy new glow-in-the-dark frisbee if it's really dark. I did a couple short throws to warm him up, and he was slow, but fine. Once we started the demo, he caught his frisbee, and just stood there in the shade. He may be smarter than I thought.

One of the new jumps we've been working on is what I affectionately call the throatpunch move. This is what it's supposed to look like when done properly. Dog is in front of the handler, and jumps over them.




However, to teach it, you start off in this rather unattractive position to make sure the dog jumps over you rather than cheating off to the side.


Have I mentioned that Duke tends to jump short? He missed and landed on top of me, hitting me with one paw in the stomach, one on my hip, one right on my throat, and the fourth one right by my ear, pinning me by my hair. It hurt. Tim suggested not practicing this move without adult supervision anymore.


Some of my fav shots from the day:
Chaser takes a photo op.


Lexie is a new puppy to the sport, and is distracted very easily by the clicks from the corner.


Little Zoey is also new to the sport, but had so much fun demo'ing today she's giving her daddy wet willies to thank him.



I'm a dobie, and I has big teefs. (I think this is Jake.)


Jumping's for those little dogs, I'll just stretch.


Taz likes to jump, and likes to go long. Taz does NOT like boring close stuff.


Taz says "MOMMA! What did I just tell you about the boring close stuff?!"


Little sister Dakota has been hanging around Taz too much.


Too far Taz, frisbee's behind you!


Little Wendy in her natural state. Crazy about the frisbee and airborne.


Bucky thinks if he looks sad enough, someone will play frisbee with him.


A million zillion more pictures here:
share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=8AYtWzVq0ZtmKh
Just pictures I took, so you're out of luck if you wanna see pictures of Duke giving me the paw.

Duke's first frisbee competition!

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.