The 2014 Atomic Blast Off is a disc event we always enjoy going to. This year it was a two day event with a discdogathon on Saturday and UFO local on Sunday.

Somebody broke into our RV on Saturday at the competition. They stole our credit cards and hit Enzo with something that cut him under his lower jaw. It was a bad situation and I was pissed off to the point I was ready to kill somebody. These dogs are our lives and I would protect them with my own life. The Vegas crew along with their team vet Casey were helpful and were able to get anti-inflammation meds and antibiotics. Enzo is doing better now. We competed with him before we realized he was injured and was awesome and even placed. He is one bad-ass fucking dog. I don’t want to talk about this more because it makes me want to go hunt down some criminals. I’m done with it.

Saturday was the discdogathon which includes 5 games. 4 of them are toss and fetch type games using 1-2 discs and the last is freestyle. It was WINDY. 20mph? It’s hard to estimate, but it was enough to destroy several ez-ups. Enzo placed second in freestyle despite having a hole in his jaw that we didn’t know about. We didn’t get video of his round, but he was amazing in the nasty wind. Slayte placed 2nd in bulls eye with a great round considering the bad wind.

My highlight Saturday was an event I have told people multiple times that my dogs are not fast enough to win or do well in… time trial. It pretty much is the fastest dog that wins. Muse won the time trial with a 19.x second round. It may not seem THAT great for a time trial (as winning times are usually more like 17 seconds), but consider the facts. There were lots of teams competing. The Atomic Dog team alone consists of a horde of about 1,000 crazy fast flyball dogs. During her round the wind was at its worse (20+mph) and I threw into HEAD WIND for the round. Yes, that is nuts. But with the tail wind, the dogs either couldn’t catch up to the discs, the discs were going too fast or the dog had a huge outrun after the catch. I was pretty much the only person that threw head wind. I sent Muse around and IMMEDIATELY threw the disc (didn’t let her lead out!) hard and with a shit-load of hyzer. The disc went out to the 20 yard line and just hung there waiting for Muse. The wind was so bad, I made the 20 yard line by literally inches on both throws with a hard throw. I never practiced this, I never planned it until right when I decided to throw that direction and walked to the line. Despite it being such a simple game and something I never practice or really care much for, it feels good to make the correct decision and throw the discs exactly the way I wanted and having Muse perform perfectly. A combination of good decision making, good throwing and an even better dog resulted in me winning an event that quite honestly I never thought would happen. I am proud of it!

Experience goes a long way in any dog sport or any sport for that matter. My experience with understanding the down-side to throwing with heavy tail wind for an event like this and having the experience, confidence and muscle memory to be able to throw a light disc in strong head wind without warming up for it first made all the difference.

Jenn got to play with Emo (Muse’s mother) and Tooney in the games and had a good time. Emo is a really intense dog and we have to return her to North Carolina in the next week and we’ll miss her a lot. She has been a joy to have even if just for a short period of time.

Saturday night we went to Gordon Ramsay’s Steak with Tina and Ellie(Gator). It was the best place I’ve ever eaten. The beef wellington is as good as he claims it is. Just amazing!

Sunday was the UFO local and we had more fun. Enzo pimped out a nice freestyle round as did Muse. Muse only had 1 miss! They both finished top 5 and got good UFO points. Slayte’s right rear leg was bothering him again during my freestyle round. I am probably going to stop doing freestyle with him so that he can focus on agility. Agility is his main sport and maybe he’s just not able to physically do 2 sports at a high level or maybe something about disc puts too much stress on his body. We will probably just put him into a toss and fetch mode for the foreseeable future. It is disappointing to me because it’s so fun doing freestyle with him but it’s not worth risking his health or his agility career. He is acting confused around the house because he keeps thinking he should be playing frisbee and tries to get the discs out of their hiding spots, but I am not playing with him. After Jenn does AKC Nationals, I’ll start doing toss/fetch with him again.

Muse:

Enzo: