Enzo and I have been invited to the Purina Incredible Dog Challenge again for the 2013 Western Regional in Las Vegas!  It is a special feeling to be considered for this and we will do our best!

We head to Las Vegas for a extravaganza of disc doggin’ with Skyhoundz and UFO events along with the Purina IDC.  As usual, I have only one expectation.  To have a blast.  Being in Vegas, I can promise that will happen!  I will say that Enzo has been at the top of his physical, mental and performing peak for the past year or more and our last several practice sessions have been exceptional.  Enzo will have a full week off from disc practice before going to Vegas.

I don’t want to leave out the other stars.  Tooney is 10 years old and still able to play like a champ.  She will compete as long as she enjoys it.  Slayte is coming along fine and I see him becoming a top team this year because his potential is huge.  Muse is only 6 months old right now and blows my mind every day with how good she is.  At that age, catching discs should be challenging and she’s doing it consistently.  At a clinic, she performed 2 rounds of toss/fetch and managed to catch all 11 out of 11 throws!

I haven’t been much in the mood for writing lately but we have been doing quite a bit of AKC agility. Slayte started getting really bad with lead outs so last weekend I pulled him in T2B and then in JWW too. I think he actually learned that I was only pulling him from the first run of the day. After two runs in a row where he didn’t get to play, his lead outs have been pretty solid since then. Last weekend, Enzo got a double Q with two first places, his third for qualifying for AKC Nationals so he just needs one more. Slayte also got his first Q since his dental surgery. He’s been a little wild since then. He had a couple weeks off after getting a root canal on a broken canine and titanium crowns on all of his canines. He goes crazy and bites his crate when when we run the other dogs so they were all damaged.

Here is his Masters Standard run from last weekend where he got 4th place.

Saturday was a little bit frustrating since I couldn’t get the power side doors open on the van. They latches were frozen! I wasted about 20 minutes on them so ended up getting to the trial later than I wanted too. I ended up not getting any Q’s on either dog. Not really surprising. Today Jeff decided to come with me and do kennel help stuff so that was really awesome. I ended up getting a Standard Q with Enzo and a double Q with Slayte. Enzo’s JWW run was a little wild and he ended up getting a bar.

His standard run was pretty good other than me getting too far behind on the dogwalk. I went too deep to the tunnel and got stuck in soft dirt. It is actually really good for Enzo not to just run straight ahead. He ended up with 2nd place.

Slayte had a pretty fast JWW run even with a spin. We were lucky we didn’t get a refusal. I just don’t do enough landing side rear crosses but I wasn’t sure he would carry out far enough. He was only .06 sec behind Enzo’s time and got 3rd place in 20″!

Standard was also clean but no placement. I think we wasted some time on the line from the aframe to the tunnel. I have to drive forward on the aframe right now to help him hit his running contact so that messed up my line. He also self released off the table but other than that he was a good boy.

We are planning on going to the USASA Nationals at Purina Farms this year so that should be fun! Possibly also going to FL after that for an UFO Major and AWI Qualifier.

Mindy became very sick last week and is no longer with us. She was our Aussie rescue about 15 years old.