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.

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.

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.

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…

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 🙂

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

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!