Furrari Aussies – Agility and Disc Dogs

So not much energy or time for computer stuff with Slayte in the house. I have all kinds of videos on the camera right now. AKC Nationals and a bunch of frisbee videos. Dunno when I’ll get to posting them! Starting to teach Slayte a few things. He’s not real into his dog food so it’s hard to get him to work for it much. I don’t want to fill him up on treats. Luckily he’s smart and picks up on things pretty quickly. He’ll offer sit and down but haven’t gotten to the point where I want to put it on cue. Working on Leave It or it’s yer choice or whatever you want to call it. Have him getting on the balance disc and on the little travel board. He learned the tunnel by watching the other dogs. I just taught him to do it when I ask yesterday which was pretty easy. He’s a funny little guy. He loves toys and tugging but his attention span isn’t very good. He will chase rollers with the puppy discs but he won’t pick up the plastic discs. He does fast restrained recalls to food and toys. Oh and he’s growing like a weed! I think my next project will be to clicker train a retrieve.

Seems like he might turn out friendlier than Enzo but I guess that time will tell on that one.

Love this pup! He’s bonkers but lots of fun and super sweet. Lots of toy drive and tons of energy! Hard to keep up with him. Only bad thing is he screams at night in his crate so not getting much sleep.

Saturday’s JWW was a really tough course for Enzo. Fast lines with lots of off course opportunities. Basically had to make sure to use a lot of deceleration cues so couldn’t let him run all out. It was quite scary to run him on that course and he was turning wide and looking at everything. We made it through clean though! yay! I think he ended up around 25th place. Then I ran Tooney and she did really well but unfortunate I used too much deceleration for her in one part where there was an off course tunnel option and she knocked a bar. Basically I handled her like Enzo. Ergh.

Standard was another kind of icky course. It had a horrible dogwalk exit for running dogwalks. Basically there were 3 jumps next to each other and they had to take the middle jump and not the one straight ahead. For Enzo I decided to do a front cross at the end of the dogwalk and then a rear cross on the next jump. I figured that was the only way to make sure that he didn’t take that off course jump. If I pulled him, I figured it would be 50/50 whether that would work or not. He broke his startline so I was a little late on the front cross and he almost flipped into the tunnel next to the dogwalk but other than that we got through that part. Then he was flying towards the teeter so I yelled wait at him as he neared the end and he did! Good boy! I rear crossed the next jump and he didn’t read a tight enough turn to the chute and I lost him to an off course jump. I really wish I had that course back again… If I had said something to him sooner I could have easily saved that.

Then Tooney ran the standard course and ran clean. I easily pulled her off the dogwalk and she was with me through the whole course. She ended up around 20th I think.

So Hybrid with Enzo was my last chance to maybe make Challengers round. The course was really a good course for him. One where he could keep a lot of speed. He had an awesome opening and then probably lost around 1 second when he shot off in the wrong direction. He still had a pretty good time so I had to wait and see if it was good enough to make the Challengers round.

Tooney had a really solid Hybrid Round. I didn’t have any expectations for Tooney this nationals. I was just really happy that she could run again and didn’t want to push her too hard or anything. I was really happy to see that she actually would have made finals if not for that darn bar! We took her shopping after her run which she really loves.

So Enzo ended up 13th in Hybrid so not high enough to make it to challengers. But still a pretty good placement especially considered the lost time. Too bad since that Challenges course looked like it would have been fun to run with him. Finally a dogwalk exit that didn’t want to make my head explode. Ha!

Good thing is that Enzo’s running contacts really help up well this weekend. They seem to actually be becoming solid! amazing! Over the next year I’ll be able to learn more about how to handle his contacts and what works and what doesn’t and we should be more prepared for the next Nationals. Maybe if I hadn’t been obsessing over the dogwalk in Standard I would have noticed that off course option.

Well one more week and we’ll be home with Slayte! Skyhoundz Southeast Regional this weekend. Just for fun since we aren’t from the southeast.

Video will come later after we get home from our cross country trip. We left our house last Monday to drive cross country to Lexington. Monday we stopped by the Hawley’s place in AZ to make our final decision on our puppy. After our first trip out we really liked two of the puppies. I thought it would be a difficult decision which one but in the end, we just knew which one was the “right” one for us. We came to the realization in about 15 minutes this time. So the puppy formally known as Frost, now Slayte, will be coming home with us at the end of our trip. We had a great time chatting with the Hawley’s for the rest of that evening and got to hug and play with our puppy a little.

So then we spent Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday driving, and driving and driving with our trailer. Enzo was pretty good Monday and Tuesday but then Wednesday he just had enough. Started whining and screaming at us. We let him play a little frisbee at some of our stops and that helped a little. He was starting to get a pretty crazed looked on his face.

We arrived in Lexington aroung 7pm on Thursday and we were all very happy to be done with driving for a few days!

Friday was the State Team Tournament which is mostly just for practice. I didn’t really have great runs with either dogs but they were both just really happy to be running and quite excited! Enzo’s running contacts looked good so that was reassuring but his running teeter flyoff was not! I marked it with a hey! and made him pause for a second, was just really hoping to make some kind of impresssion on him! I couldn’t tell at the time if he cared or not. Tooney looked great in both her runs but for some reason Friday is a blur and I don’t really remember much of anything else about it right now!

I think that’s enough typing for now so more later!

This disc dog event is dedicated to Greg Mauldin who(m?) we lost several years ago in a motorcycle accident. We knew him, but not very well. He was an avid disc dogger and was in our first disc dog class.

The competition consists of 3 events. Toss/fetch, obstacle course and bullseye. It was a huge turnout, 60 entries! After the toss/fetch and obstacle course, I thought Enzo was probably in 1st place as he had a great toss/fetch and a solid obstacle course. Unfortunately, I got hosed on the bullseye with a huge change in wind. It got way stronger and completely changed direction. I didn’t adjust in time and he got a low score. I figured that took him out of it. Tooney, on the other hand, had a decent toss/fetch and a solid obstacle course going into the final round of bullseye. In bullseye, she had a great round. We left early figuring both dogs did pretty good, but not enough to win and we had to get the trailer for our big trip.

I got an email of the results. They gave out awards to the winners of each of the 3 individual events and the overall combined winner. Tooney won! She also was only 0.5 points away from winning the bullseye. Enzo, on the other hand, won the toss/fetch event! It was a difficult toss/fetch as the field was configured to only allow to throw in 1 direction and it was into a head wind. With no bonus zone and a narrowing field (only 10 yards wide at 40 yards), it was risky for me to throw 40 yeards, but I did and it was worth it. He had 17 points, which is awesome for no bonus zone and the narrow field with out-of-bounds!

One interesting point is that there were a total of 8 catches in the entire toss/fetch event at 40 yards and I accounted for 4 of those (Enzo 3, Tooney 1). There were probably over 300 total throws, so it was a nice accomplisment. I rarely feel proud of myself, but this time I am. It wasn’t easy and it shows I’m a pretty good thrower! Instead of always giving the dogs the credit for any success we have, I’ll take some credit this time. I’m awesome. HAHA!

We are at AKC nationals with Enzo having an outside shot at making the finals. Jenn will post an update on that with videos some time after we get back.

The disc dog season is continuing with Enzo on a roll! He won the 2011 Las Vegas UFO competition and should also be at the top of the UFO standings for a while now, with a perfect score of 40 so far. We drove there early in the morning, competed, then drove back late after the competition. Long day, but it was worth it. Tooney got to play again and had fun. Jenn got to play with Enzo again and it was pretty funny in their first round. The disc was going all over the place because Jenn didn’t warm up, but Enzo gladly caught them all and paused to peer into the audience to look at all of the people dressed in yellow (that looked like me)! He was completely confused. Yellow is my color of course, but it also the Las Vegas group’s color (Atomic Dogs). See their club photo:

Enzo had a great toss/fetch round and was PERFECT. He is making toss/fetch look EASY. I think he had the highest toss/fetch score of the day around 15.5 probably. He also had the highest freestyle score of the day.

Jenn and I have made a general decision with all of the dogs that it will always be in the best interest of the dog’s development to do things that will give them a chance to learn and be their best, whether it’s disc, agility or anything else they do. For disc, this means to throw in such a way that would give them the best opportunity for the most possible points. I prefer to throw nice floaters at 40 yards that any dog should be able to catch. With some wind conditions, this type of throw is impossible. Based on wind conditions, don’t throw the conservative method where your best chances are 10 points if you are perfect, throw so that your best chances are 20 if you are perfect. It may be a higher risk situation because we are likely throwing in such a way that is more challenging for the dog to catch. Whether or not they are successful in terms of catching, they are successful in terms of experience and the dogs always enjoy a challenge.

With that said, wind during the toss/fetch round was not very good for Enzo, being a left-to-right wind. Strong left-to-right or strong tail winds are were his nemesis, which happens to be the preferred way to throw for a right-handed thrower such as myself. It pushes the disc down making it fly like a line-drive instead of a nice floating throw. I could have potentially thrown from the opposite side, but then there are a whole host of problems from the thrower’s standpoint – mainly with the disc being pulled way off course to the left if putting too much hyzer on the disc or by doing a nose dive into the ground if putting too much anhyzer on the disc. Basically, I would need to throw much better if I throw from the right-to-left cross wind side. I CAN throw good in those conditions, but if I throw from the left-to-right cross wind side, I WILL throw good and Enzo will have a chance for a big score.

When the disc is at 4-6′ in the air at 40 yards, Enzo has a tendancy to blow past the disc by running right under it without any reaction or he will mis-time his jump. We’ve seen this over and over again. I have had so many 0’s in toss/fetch because of this I can’t even tell you. However, I keep going out and giving him the chance to learn. It has turned out to be a great decision because I rarely ever see him make these mistakes. He is adjusting his stride and has great timing with almost every throw, even in practice.