The AWI qualifier was held at a dog festival in San Marcos. It was a gloomy day with some rain, wind and somewhat cold. The AWI finals are held in SoCal this year and 4 teams qualify for the finals at each event. They allow up to 2 Q’s per person at qualifiers and I was hoping to get 2 dogs into the finals. It was a decent sized competition with around 20 teams competing in the qualifying division. Minimum age to compete at the AWI is 12 months and it was Key’s 1st birthday the day of the competition!

Muse had two great rounds of freestyle in the wind and despite my shitty throws in toss/fetch, she qualified! Enzo was bonkers all day and could not put a single good round together unfortunately – I figured my hopes of 2 dogs qualifying were gone. To my surprise, Key managed to put together a very good first round of freestyle and one of the best toss/fetch rounds to put her just one spot out of qualifying going into the final round. She had an even better second round freestyle score in stronger wind to finish in a qualifying spot! I am proud of my little Kernel K for getting a spot in the finals. Unexpected but very proud and appreciative of the judges for seeing the quality in what she is doing in freestyle, considering she is still doing a puppy routine.

Muse won the money in the cash and fetch event with a pretty big score. Slayte got 2nd! It’s the first time Muse beat Slayte in toss/fetch since some time last year! That’s a compliment to Slayte because Muse is a pretty fantastic toss/fetch dog!

Key is incredibly intense, focused, fast and good at tracking. She does not have the pure catching ability of Muse but given how windy the competition was, I think she’s pretty darn close! Couple that with her better speed, jumping ability and cuteness, I think she’s going to be beating Muse in the future, possibly as early as this year. She is flashier than Muse and simply looks more exciting when playing. The future is bright for these two as they are only 1 and 2 years old right now!

One problem with Key right now is I have to use super flex discs as she tends to fumble around with any other normal plastic discs (fastbacks or xtras). She likes the soft disc to be able to bite into when retrieving. Super flex discs are OK in freestyle, but when throwing distance, it’s a real pain. It ends up being similar to throwing a floppy disc having lack of control and lack of distance. I hope she can learn to play with xtras in the future for toss/fetch, but for now this is what we have to use. I tested an xtra on her yesterday and she was able to catch it just fine but as soon as she’d catch it, she’d start messing around with her grip on it as she would try to retrieve it. It was better than the previous test a while back, but still not good enough.

Key’s freestyle and toss/fetch rounds:

Muse freestyle rounds (Muse says what wind?!?!):

Also congrats to Kirby for the other two qualifying spots.