We’ve been to two trials since my last post. Aug 11-12 weekend was a really solid weekend for Slayte. He Q’d in both FAST runs. The novice sends were not an issue at all. He Q’d in both novice JWW runs and one standard run. The first JWW run was completely clean and smooth and second was good too except that he missed the weave entry. Those two Q’s finished his NAJ! His standard run on Saturday was really good too. Contacts were all really solid. In Sunday’s standard run, I did a front cross before the aframe which shortened up his stride and he ended up missing the aframe contact. He also self released off the dogwalk because the tunnel was calling to him. Qing 5 out of 6 runs was just incredible for the baby dog! Enzo q’d in standard on Sat and just missed a double q by one bar in JWW. Grrr.

Last weekend was just horribly hot. Close to 100 every day and more humid than normal for around here. I don’t function all that well in that kind of heat but the dogs did ok. I ran Enzo 3 days and Slayte two days. Enzo only q’d in one JWW run and one standard for the weeked. We missed a double q by one bar again! On Friday Slayte had a bar and would only do 10 weaves in T2B. In open JWW he did the weaves but got an off course tunnel. Then in standard he had a flying teeter flyoff. The teeter barely tipped before he came off the end. Not sure if he was too excited or thought it was the dogwalk. He did hesitate a bit at the top of the upramp of the dogwalk. I also pulled him off a jump because I overdid it on turning cues. Such a big difference between Enzo the missle and Slayte the gumby dog.

Slayte’s T2B run on sunday was pretty nice so I bought the video even though we didn’t Q. He was about 3 seconds behind the fastest 20″ dog who is a really fast BC. I tried another front cross before the aframe and that shortened his stride up again. But hey he got his weave entrance and he did all 12! Lol. We can’t really practice weave entrances at a lot of speed in our yard. He does fine in class so all that should come with experience. In open jww he did good except for blowing by the weaves and then popping out at 10, twice. Novice standard had another course that teally needed a front before the aframe. I didn’t want to do that and I haven’t practiced severe pushes off the aframe so I just let him come off in front of me and stepped behind him. Also missed the weave entry again and didn’t stay on the table. Good enough for a Q in novice so that finished his NA! Really proud of him running so well in the heat too.
Also bought a video of Enzo’s JWW run from Sunday because it was one of our better runs in a while! He got first place in this run too.

On July 29, I ran LG in AKC Novice standard and JWW and he got his first two Q’s! Hooray for the baby dog! Neither run was perfect but jumpers was clean. All the mistakes were handling induced and lg did his job. It is a little strange for me to go out with my baby dog and actually have him do exactly what I would expect him to do! Enzo was a wreck in standard the first time I ran him. Enzo didn’t want to lay down or sit on the table, refused the chute and I completely forgot to expose him to a panel jump. Probably didn’t perform his contacts correctly either. This time I made sure to prepare lg for the things that we forget to train properly. Enzo ended up moving into Ex JWW very quickly but it was several months later before we could Q in standard.

Lg’s stopped contacts are also way more solid than any other dog I’ve trained. I did two things differently. First I trained the behavior without a nose target. Our puppy class instructor Geri, had us teach the end position on the teeter first. No props just hop on the end into 2on/off. I did have him lay down on the end at first since he didn’t want to shift his weight back before. It was much harder to teach and took longer but I think he understands better. The other thing that I did differently was to fade food rewards early on. I feel like my other dogs would get “ringwise” when they quickly realized they weren’t getting a cookie in the ring. So sometimes Slayte gets rewarded with a toy and sometimes he gets to continue. Time will tell but even in these early stages I can see that the behavior is much stronger.

Here is his JWW run. I over pulled him on that first turn because I was worried about the jump to the left. That is a typical Enzo move. Hard to switch gears for me. The closing line was pretty hard. It was a very slight zig zag. I was hoping to run it as a straight line but that didn’t quite work out. Not suprised. The rest was great and he nailed the weaves. I just need to remember to not rush ahead at the weaves.

Then Standard. I tried to shape his approach to the dogwalk and over did it a bit but it worked out fine. He did a great stop at the end. I probably released him a little too quick but I got excited and said Yes! as soon as his front feet hit. His aframe contact was borderline. He was doing great on the aframe and then he started one striding so when I marked that he started shortening up a little. That started just a couple weeks ago. Last night in class our instructer told me that maybe I need to stay closer and that seemed to help. He drove really nice to the table, didn’t fall off, and stayed when I led out! Awesome! I didn’t really handle the next part well. I ran up too far before rear crossing the chute so he didn’t see it at all. In hindsight, I led out far enough that a front cross before the chute would have been easy. We still got the Q though since you can have faults in novice! Love that. I really want to get out of novice and open quickly so I don’t have to wait all day! The waiting is painful.

Tooney, Enzo and Slayte had their USDDN and local Skyhoundz competitions the past couple of weeks.

USDDN

USDDN consists of a Super Open (2 rounds of freestyle + 1 round toss and fetch) and a Super Pro (2 rounds of toss and fetch only).

At the USDDN, Enzo was simply awesome. He won the Super Open division and got 5th in the Super Pro and qualified for the finals in both!

Slayte had his best competition yet (up to this point)!!! We managed his resources by keeping him cool in the air conditioned RV and rested him as much as possible. He finished 3rd in Super Open, qualifying for the finals!

Jenn also got to play with Slayte in Super Pro, so she had some fun with him. She forfeited her last round so he’d have more energy with me in his last freestyle round. That was nice of her and it paid off!

This competition is too much for a dog of Tooney’s age to do all the events so I entered her only in Super Pro. She was STELLAR! She came from behind and won the Super Pro division qualified for finals!

Torrance Skyhoundz

Next up was the Torrance Skyhoundz competition that consists of a toss and fetch type game, hopscotch and speed disc. These are games mostly of accuracy and control.

Slayte had his best competition yet!!! (notice a trend here??) He was so friggin’ good I almost couldn’t believe it. He had a 23.5 in the toss and fetch which was best in the competition. He also was the only dog to complete the hopscotch, winning that also. He did solid in the speed disc and finished 1st place overall! The best part was he had good energy the whole competition and was very consistent.

Tooney won this event last year and did good again this year. She got 2nd place in toss/fetch and 2nd place in hopscotch and got a second place overall!

Enzo, as usual, was not good at this event. He runs too fast and jumps too far. This makes it nearly impossible to hit the scoring zones that require accuracy. He doesn’t care. He still got to run, jump, catch and have fun! That’s all that really matters. Instead of being frustrated by it, I learned a few years ago to just go out and simply play some frisbee with my dog and not worry about how he does in terms of scoring.

I love starting the baby dogs. Never know what to expect which makes it exciting! I entered him in T2B only for his first trial. When I entered him, I didn’t know if his stop on the dogwalk would be ready yet and they run T2B in the morning so I wouldn’t have to wait all day for Novice. His stop on the dogwalk is actually good now so I’ll do novice with him on July 29.

Here’s the video from his first run. He did really awesome. He just forgot how to hit his weave entrance. I didn’t help much either. Lol. Watching the video I can see that I just went flying past them like I would with Enzo and then I was too spastic trying to bring him back which just got him too wound up. He also hit higher than he normally does on the Aframe but that is kinda normal when he gets on a new aframe. Luckily he normally hits pretty low unlike Enzo who is almost always in that top 6″! I wasn’t sure if he would do the tire properly since the last time we did it he kept going under it, but he did fine with that. No issues with the bouncy teeter either which is just awesome. I also exhibited self comtrol by not saying anything when he stopped a little short on the teeter until he put his front feet on the ground. Ha!

I went home and practiced weaves and of course he did fine there. Next day, Slayte did awesome again. He was pushier at the start which was not suprising. He has been having issues with stays lately in practice. Patience has never been one of his virtues! He remembered how to weave though. Yay! Also nice stop on the teeter even and nice deep hit on the aframe. There was one turn that I thought was a little wide but that was my fault. Can you figure out which one? LOL because my standards for Slayte’s turns are much higher than for Enzo.

Oh and here are a couple bonus videos of Enzo.

Slayte is really starting to come together. I have him entered in T2B in two weeks to see how he does. I am not entering him in Novice yet since he needs some more practice on his dogwalk. I decided to switch from running to a stop about a month ago.

We did some fun runs yesterday just to get him running on different equipment and in a new environment. His first run was a little scatter-brained but the next three were all good. He didn’t always stick his dogwalk contact though so we definitely need more practice and proofing. He just startes doing the full dogwalk with the stop last week so can’t blame him for that. His running aframe looks really good and doing different teeters doesn’t seem to bother him. He doesn’t always collect for his weave entrances yet but I worked that last week and I see improvement there.

Exciting times! Hopefully he will do well in T2B and then I can enter him in Novice in August!

Enzo and I were invited to the Purina Incredible Dog Challenge this year. It is an honor and privelege to be able to perform freestyle in front of that crowd in that arena. Plus a chance to make it on TV!

On Friday was the qualifier, so I entered Slayte. I wasn’t expecting to have a realistic chance of him qualifying. He did really well despite being somewhat distracted, but he fought through it and caught really well in the round. I made some nice fancy throws including some skips. Here’s his fun round:

I am proud of Slayte because he is already doing things in his routine I won’t even attempt with Enzo. That’s how good this dog is! He can catch skips, butterflies and other difficult throws that my other dogs never could catch.

On Saturday was the finals and Enzo performed well. He was super fast and wild in his routine. The wildness lead to quite a few drops, which took us out of contention for the win. He ended up in 4th place and I’m happy with how we did. I wish I would have ajusted more for the down-wind throws. They were lower than Enzo wanted so he kept jumping over the disc.

After the freestyle round is the 2 bonus throws. It’s about 37 yards from center to center of the squares. It’s not easy to hit the bonus throws. I am happy that we finished strong by hitting both bonus throws.

Jenn and I headed north to Dixon for a small disc dog competition. It’s a total of about 7 hours and we left Friday evening with hopes to drive about 4 hours or so and then make a quick stop around 1AM for a few hours of sleep before finishing the drive early in the morning. Unfortunately luck wouldn’t be with us. The traffic through the Grapevine was backed up forever due to an accident. It took us about 3 hours to get through that. We ended up with about 2 hours of sleep. That doesn’t bode well for a competition!

The dogs did OK for the freestyle and toss/fetch with the exception of Slayte. He was totally wasted. He couldn’t hardly do anything because of the lack of sleep. It’s ok, he’s still learning about all of this traveling and competing still.

After the normal competition was a long-distance event. Enzo won the men’s division! We won it with a 66 yard throw. The coolest part is next year’s trophy will have Enzo’s picture on it. How neat is that? Jenn got 3rd place with Tooney in the women’s division. Her throw was around 44 yards I think, which is awesome!

Jenn entered Slayte into his first agility competition as an exhibition and he’s now officially all grown up! He did AWESOME! He was over 6yps on both runs, which is totally phat. Here’s his videos: