D2iSC put on a fun event that consisted of four games. Obstacle course, circle toss, toss / fetch and speed disc. It is similar to a Skyhoundz discdogathon. These events are fun because I don’t need to prepare myself for any freestyle, just go out and do what is natural – throw the disc to the dog.

Jenn did agility with Slayte nearby and came to play some disc with him later in the day. Enzo was solid on 3 of 4 events. Tooney did well but stepped on something that bothered her foot and wasn’t able to do the circle toss (her best event), or I’m pretty certain she would have won the event. She still managed to get 2nd place in speed disc, which is not her strong event!

This is becoming a bit like a broken record, but Muse won the overall combined championship on the strength of the best circle toss and solid results in all the other events. She is 11 months old now and she has won or at least placed top three in the past 4-5 competitions. It’s pretty exciting!!!

I decided to go to the Colorado Canine Challenge to try and get Muse and Enzo more UFO points in preparation for the finals there in October. Last year Enzo finished 2nd overall and I hope for a similar result this year. If Muse can make the cut into the top 10, she has a chance to gain more UFO points. Enzo needs to make top 3 to move up. Muse and Enzo right now are 4th and 5th in the overall UFO standings.

We traveled to Eugene, Oregon for the 2013 Pacific Coast Canine Disc Championships (PCCDC). It included people from Washington, Oregon, Montana and all over California. It was a pretty big event with Saturday lasting until 7 or 8PM. Saturday was a UFO Major (freestyle + toss/fetch) and Sunday was a UFO D-Tour distance event. Between the two days, there are winners for individual events and for the two days combined.

Jenn played with Tooney again in the intermediate division on Saturday and the D-Tour on Sunday. In the D-Tour, she was hilarious. It’s not a timed event, but Tooney would bring the disc back and immediately run back down the field 40 yards while Jenn is yelling at her to come back.

Slayte and Enzo were both very solid for me on Saturday. I am surprised that neither of them made the top 10 cut in freestyle, but Slayte was in 3rd place going to the 2nd round of toss/fetch. Slayte ended up finishing as the top team not to make the cut (beating Enzo!).

My goals for this event were to get a catch over 70 yards in the D-Tour, qualify a dog for the D-Tour finals and place high or win the overall championship. I hoped to do these things with Enzo… to my surprise, Muse managed to accomplish all of these goals herself.

On Saturday, Muse had great freestyle rounds, a solid toss/fetch and finished 3rd overall in the UFO and 3rd in freestyle. She will move up significantly in the UFO standings! She is only 11 months old. It was apparent early on that Muse would be a great toss/fetch dog, but to my surprise (and delight!), she is actually showing that she is even BETTER in freestyle. Anybody that has seen her toss/fetch knows she is nearly flawless. To be even better in freestyle is something that is going to be scary-good for Team Furrari! I see a lot of big wins in her future. I made a strategic error in her toss/fetch round because I threw a short throw as the 4th throw to make sure I could get 5 throws off. It turns out I could have easily made 5 long throws. She’s getting faster and I’m still learning her timing. I actually could have probably got 6 throws off (with 2 short ones), but I wasn’t expecting all the extra time!

For the D-Tour distance event on Sunday, I wasn’t even planning to play with Muse because of her inexperience with distance. She only recently has been able to catch 40 yard throws. I only played with her because she placed so high on Saturday and she would have a chance to win the overall championship. The D-Tour gives you three throws in the first round with your longest catch being your score. The top five teams make the cut for the second round where you get another three throws and the longest catch of those is the winner. The top three are the qualifiers for the finals. The wind was not good for getting long throws. In my first round, I threw a 50 yard throw just to get her warmed up to distance. The next throw went a little over 55 yards. I was happy with this and was going to scratch my last throw and started to walk off the field. The line judge, Tombi, said I should do another throw. I wasn’t worried about making the cut, I just wanted to get a solid score with her (FYI, it would not have made the cut). Muse was running around, biting at the disc and making it look clear she wanted another throw. I walked up to the line and threw one more and tried to get more distance out of it. She caught it at 65 yards and easily made the cut to the next round.

In the final round, I had two throws that weren’t very good. She caught one, but only at about 55 yards or so. There was a slight head wind I wasn’t expecting so the discs were going high in the air. On my last throw, I made my footwork very simple and concentrated a lot on my arm motion and rotation. It was a good line drive throw. Muse ran out to about 40 yards and lost the disc! She is looking around while everybody is yelling “GO GO GO!!!”. She relocates the disc, which is WAY out in front of her. She runs for it and luckily, the disc got some head wind and popped up in the air just enough for her to catch up to it. Then she tipped it! Everybody again says “GO GO GO!!!”. She runs it down and snags it just over 70 yards! It was long enough to secure 2nd place in the distance and qualify for the D-Tour finals. Muse also entered the D-Tour Women’s division with Ellie and placed 3rd and had the longest throw of the women (close to 60 yards in the first round). She is now qualified for both the Men’s and Women’s divisions. I don’t know if any dog has ever done that before.

With the 3rd place overall on Saturday combined with 2nd place Sunday, Muse won the 2013 PCCDC Championship… at just 11 months old. Wow! There were a lot of awards given out for this competition for the various events and the combined events for the weekend. Muse won 7 of the 8 possible awards she was able to win, which is astonishing. Here is the rundown of what she won: 2013 PCCDC Champion, PCCDC Freestyle Champion, PCCDC Toss/Fetch 2nd Place, UFO Major 3rd place overall, UFO Major 3rd place freestyle, Men’s D-Tour 2nd place, Women’s D-Tour 3rd place. Here is a picture of Muse with six of her awards (Ellie has the award she earned with Muse). The D-Tour and UFO awards are dog tags hanging from the big championship trophy:

Here is Muse and her awesome freestyle round: