The disc dog season so far has been very busy for us.

At the SoCal UFO major, Muse finished 2nd overall and 2nd in toss/fetch. Muse was 1st in the UFO North American rankings for quite a while and is now in 2nd place.

We went to Colorado for the 2-day Thorntonfest, which is one of the biggest competitions in the country with something like 13 states represented. Saturday was the Skyhoundz qualifier, which Muse won! Enzo finished 3rd! Sunday was the AWI qualifier, which was the main reason I went. Muse won and Enzo got 2nd! Enzo was in first place going into the final round and I thought Enzo had the best freestyle round, but Muse still managed to come from behind to win. Muse also won the AWI Cash and Catch prize money, which I donated back to the CDD club. Since both of my top dogs qualified for the AWI, I judged the SoCal AWI a couple weeks later.

We had our Skyhoundz regional and discdogathon. Muse was amazing. She won the overall and D/A (nearly setting a record) on Saturday and had all 3 D/A rounds of over 20 points AND she missed one and another went just out of bounds. Her scores could have been even higher. At the discdogathon, I judged the freestyle event. Muse won nearly everything else, though. She won the team D/A with Jenn and I, the time trial and the bullseye. She got 2nd place in the spot landing event. Wow. She’s qualified for virtually everything for Skyhoundz now, but it is unlikely we will be able to attend the finals.

Jenn got invited to the Purina IDC Western Regional for agility with Slayte. She had a good time, but Slayte wasn’t clean on any of his runs unfortunately. He was a wild man out there. He has been consistent since that competition, so it’s a bit disappointing he didn’t run clean. I entered the freestyle flying disc qualifier on Friday and Muse got 1st while Enzo finished 2nd. Enzo had one of his best rounds ever, but Muse still scored higher. No matter what he does, Muse is going to finish ahead I guess! They only took one qualifier for a handler and Muse was the dog since she won. Muse had a good round at the finals but not her best as I think she had some problems with the heat, stress (from all the noise) and difficulty tracking the white discs. Despite that, she finished 3rd and made the podium.

We aren’t done yet, more updates!

Muse placed 3rd in the USDDN Super Open qualifier and won the Super Pro division. She scored a perfect toss/fetch score of 22.5 in the Super Open division with only 5 throws. I still had 30 seconds left but didn’t need it! Her scores in freestyle were fairly low for her and it tells me maybe she doesn’t have a good routine for USDDN as they look at very specific things. I believe some of the things we excel in don’t reflect much in the scoring system such as my advanced throws. There is probably just a single category worth at most 2.5 points (out of 40) that accounts for advanced throws while in other organizations it is going to influence all the categories, thus boosting our score more.

My hope is to go to the AWI and UFO North American finals along with the CCC to compete in the UFO toss/fetch and D-Tour finals (which Muse is already qualified). I am not much for distance but the fact we’re already qualified and the UFO major along with the toss/fetch finals all happening at once, it’s a pretty good event for us to go to. Muse will have a chance to win the UFO North American cup if we are able to go to the CCC and the finals in Naperville. The main possible issue is that Muse could go into heat. If she does, then we won’t be able to go. Nothing I can do about it and I’m not going to worry about it.

One thing that I want to say is I’m super excited about how Muse is doing in toss/fetch. She is winning most toss/fetch events she enters now. Her speed and catching are significantly improved from last year and she’s at the very top of her game right now. She’s not even 2 years old yet! Previously, freestyle was always more consistent than toss/fetch. Now her toss/fetch has caught up and she puts up a huge score nearly every time. She used to miss discs for no obvious reason and I couldn’t even tell why. She’d jump, the disc would be close and she would just be off enough she couldn’t make an attempt on it. I knew she’d improve and she certainly has. She catches virtually every throw now and we get 5 throws in 60 seconds at 40 yards nearly every time as well.

Lastly, we got a new puppy! Key. It’s Slayte’s daughter (with Emo, Muse’s mother). It looks like she is going to be good at tracking discs and she has high prey drive. It will take time to find out if she really will be good. Hopefully she’ll also be an agility dog!