The other news of the weekend is that we decided to officially retire Sydney from Frisbee competitions. He is going to be 11 next month. His body is still in really good shape but his mental focus just isn’t there anymore. He keeps dropping the disc out at 40 yds and wandering off. Also, before you throw the disc he’s just impossible to keep in a stay which gets really frustrating. He has just become more and more difficult to deal with in a competition setting and it’s not that fun anymore for either him or us. So the last frisbee competition of the season is also the last of his career. Sydney had a good long run. It’s just too bad that he didn’t have a better foundation in his early training.

We went to Vegas for a 3 day weekend. Friday and Sunday was AKC agility and Saturday was a frisbee day, Las Vegas’s first UFO local.

The AKC trial was tiny, only around 50 excellent dogs. We drove out to Vegas on Friday morning since the trial didn’t start until 3pm. Enzo had a really nice standard run other than a couple wide turns because of my late front crosses. He ended up getting first place. Don’t know if it was the long drive or cold windy weather but Tooney was just bonkers. She ran behind me to take an off course jump and also missed both her aframe and dogwalk contacts. In JWW, Enzo ran first and had a nice run but knocked a bar so we didn’t get the double Q. Tooney did much better in this run but also knocked one bar. Oh and we went to eat at the Rio Seafood Buffet afterwards which is my fav at Vegas because of the all you can eat yummy lobsters!

Saturday was the disc dog competition and had the worst weather. The coldest and windiest day of the weekend. I ended up doing catch ratio so no pictures or video of the frisbee this time. They also did rotating judging where they split the competitors into two groups and each group judged the other so Jeff got his first taste of judging now. Of course he will have to judge a lot next year since our club has the top 3 competitors judge at that competition next year.

Jeff and Enzo did pretty good in freestyle considering the conditions with a catch ratio close to 60%. They had the highest freestyle score in their group and second highest overall. Toss and Fetch actually went pretty well for them. They got two catches for 7 points which was really good in that strong cross wind and ended up winning the competition! Oh and I ended up placing 2nd in intermediate with Enzo too! The competition finished up pretty early and we headed over to the Hoover Dam just to see it and take a couple pictures but we didn’t do the tours. The dam really isn’t as impressive as I thought it would be but that bridge that they are building for the Hoover Dam bypass is scary!

Sunday we went back to agility. Tooney was nuts again. She blew by the table in standard to take a jump and leapt over the dogwalk contact. I was pushing on her a little so I think she couldn’t take that pressure and leapt off the side. Enzo had another really nice clean run in standard and placed 1st again. In JWW Tooney went off course again. Enzo took a good hard look at the same off course tunnel but I was able to call him off of it. He had at least one more really wide turn but made it through the course clean so he got his second double Q!

Jeff took video of my runs but I probably won’t get a chance to upload them before we leave for Atlanta on Wednesday!

Ok Here are some of the videos:

Today I went to an AKC trial. In standard Tooney missed her Aframe contact which almost never happens and Enzo had an awesome run. A couple slightly wide turns but he ended up with 3rd place and only 1.4 seconds behind Driven who won at AKC Nationals this year.

Jumpers had some tricky angles in it but both Tooney and Enzo ran clean. Tooney had a nice efficient run. Enzo’s run was a little on the edge. He was really fast and I ended up really late on a rear cross so he went really wide and came really close to running past the next jump. He also spun coming out of a tunnel near the end because I ran along the back side and couldn’t meet him at the end. We made it though. Enzo placed 4th and Tooney 5th. This seems to happen a lot! There were only a few tenths of a second between 2nd place and 5th place. Driven came in first and was a couple seconds ahead.

Most importantly, Enzo got his first double Q!!!! Maybe there is hope to get 5 more by the end of November…

Tooney turned 6 years old today! Hard to believe! Here’s a cool pic that my friend Marci’s husband Thomas took at Bay Team a few weeks ago. Plus some puppy pics from the archive!

Tooney at 10 weeks old in the snow:

Tooney at 12 weeks old:

5 months old:

7 months old and getting groomed properly (which doesn’t really happen much!)

1 year old!

And today 6 years old!

We went to a UFO Local competition in Flagstaff AZ this weekend. They did two rounds of freestyle. Their first round was definitely the best routine that they have had so far. Enzo’s catch ratio was 83% ! His catching ability is just really improving the past few months. It was pretty windy in the second round but he still caught 70-some percent of the discs. Jeff is doing a lot better with adjusting for the wind now. Jeff and Enzo were by far the most experienced freestyle team out there so even though they didn’t have a good Toss & Catch round they still ended up placing first! That gave them enough points to qualify for the UFO World Cup finals. I don’t think that we will be able to go this year though.

Tooney also did really well in her routines with Jeff and they placed 3rd overall in Open.

It was a small competition and the AZ Disc Dog Club is pretty new so I ended up being one of the judges for freestyle. That was my first time judging. It was interesting but difficult! All three of us judges were first timers.

We drove back last night and then I went to an AKC trial this morning. Tooney got 2nd place in standard and had a nice jumpers run but knocked a bar. It seems like I got her dogwalk speeded back up again but I’m a little worried that she might start leaping. One issue at a time I guess. Enzo went off couse in standard. He took the wrong end of a tunnel that I could have sworn was not in his line of sight. I know at least two other fast dogs in 16″ did the same thing though. In JWW, he knocked a bar early on and then had an off course later on but that was totally my fault.