Jenn and I headed out towards Vegas last Friday night for the 5th Annual Atomic Blast Off UFO World Cup series disc dog competition. We stopped in Primm and stayed in the parking lot of a Casino called Whiskey Pete’s since they allow overnight RV parking. Speaking of RV, the new Nexus motorhome we got is awesome! We are super happy we got it and it has made our travels about as easy and comfortable as we could wish for. The dogs even like it. Slayte likes it so much he already ate the seat belt – yep, we have it into the Ford dealership to have the seat belt replaced for $300.

Tooney, Enzo and Slayte all did really well. Enzo was 2nd and Tooney 3rd in freestyle with me. Jenn got 1st with Enzo and 3rd with Slayte in the toss/fetch division! Jenn didn’t play with Tooney. Poor Tooney got sick the next day and took her a few days before she started eating again. She seems mostly recovered now and she should be able to compete in the AWI this weekend.

Here’s the freestyle rounds filmed from Jenn’s new iPad 3!!! They came out very nice!

Enzo:

Tooney:

Slayte:

Wow what a weekend! This was my first Nationals of any venue where I was running just Enzo. It was nice to be able to focus on him. We had been struggling a bit lately. I have been having trouble keeping on course with him. Monday my instructer Stephanie Spyr gave me some good advice and it helped a lot! I also realized that it takes an extremely high level of concentration on my part to run Enzo well and most of the time I just don’t get to that level. Running 5 straight runs clean just doesn’t ever normally happen for us.

Friday morning was the warmup standard run. Enzo was awesome and nailed all of his contacts which gave me some more confidence for the rest of the weekend. It didn’t count for anything but we placed third! Then Friday afternoon was Time to Beat. The winner of this round would get an spot in the challengers round. Enzo had a solid run and placed 6th.

Time 2 beat vid coming soon.

So it was an awesome first day for Enzo. Saturday the real Nationals runs started. Saturday morning was Round 1, Jumpers with Weaves. It was a pretty straightforward course with a few areas where I had to be careful not to lose him off course. Enzo had a really good run that was clean! He ended up in 14th place which was a solid placement. Top 10 in the 16″ division would make it into the finals and there were about 140 dogs.

Round 2 was the standard course. This is where Enzo’s running contacts can give him an advantage. There were 90 degrees turns off of both the dogwalk and aframe but at least there was no off course possibility after the dogwalk which judges seem to like to do lately. Enzo had a really awesome run and placed 5th in this round. That was probably good enough to at least get him into the challengers round if at least one of the dogs that placed ahead of him in this round were clean for all 3. His cumulative placement for the two rounds at this point was 8th!

Sunday morning was Round 3, the Hybrid course which is basically a jumpers course plus a teeter and an aframe. This was definitely the hardest course of the weekend. Enzo had some pretty wide turns when he was looking at all the off course choices. After the teeter, he almost took the wrong jump straight ahead but called off at the last second. Scary! I thought for sure he was going to take it. We made it clean through the course and stayed in 8th place to make it into the finals! I had looked at the challengers course in the morning and decided that I really didn’t want to run that course so it gave me some extra incentive to stay clean. Otherwise, I’ve always thought that it would be fun to run in the Challengers round.

The finals course looked fun and didn’t look as difficult on paper as it ran. I was pretty excited going into the finals and so was Enzo. I got a little too excited in the weave and left too abruptly which pulled him out of the weaves. After that I just decided to run hard and have fun with it. That of course made Enzo wild and he launched off the dog walk and teeter and made a lot of wide turns but he got to run fast. I was just really happy to make it there! Very proud of the little boy!

Disc Dog Empire (DDE) hosted their first competition as a club and it was a Discdogathon world championships qualifier that includes freestyle, bullseye, time trial, spot landing and pairs distance/accuracy. Yeah, 5 events in 1 day with a turnout that included close to 100 entries in certain events. DDE did a great job. The weather was beautiful in the mid 70’s and sunny.

Freestyle started for me with Slayte. He did a full freestyle routine and didn’t leave the field and only glanced off a couple of times. I mixed in tugging about every 20-30 seconds and finished with a roller. His focus was excellent. Not only that, he actually had a great routine and had 75% ratio. When I left the field I told Jenn that I don’t care about the rest of the day – little did I know what was to come! At the end of the day, this was clearly Jenn’s favorite moment.

LG preparing to tug:

Tooney was next in freestyle and what an awesome routine she put out. 1 drop! I was hitting myself because again, almost a perfect routine except for 1 throw. I can’t even say I wish I had the throw back. It was just slightly low and she slowed up and didn’t make a good attempt. It is hard to catch 20 straight discs.

Enzo was last to go for us and I did a “first”. No routine!!! What? Yeah, normally I have a totally set routine for Enzo with every throw and motion choreographed. I just wanted to do something different. It paid off. Enzo had a perfect routine with 0 drops! I was so stoked. Enzo also won the event. Considering the big turnout, I was really impressed. I have been wanting to have a perfect routine for so long, I’m glad we managed to obtain that goal. It is very satisfying.

Bullseye was very good for Tooney and solid for Enzo. Slayte had his only lapse of the day when he ran up to another dog, but then continued the round.

For time trial, the wind was picking up but Jenn had the best time of our crew with a 23 seconds round by Slayte! It was one of the best of the day, but not sure exactly where he finished. Tooney also had a really good round with 29 seconds.

Pairs distance/accuracy is a toss and fetch event where 2 players alternate throws. I like it a lot. Jenn played with Karen and Bentley and had a nice round. I got to play with Ellie and Preston and we also had a good round. I played with Jerry and Dakota and were great with a 2nd place finish! Jenn and I had a really awesome round with Enzo and my last disc just floated out of bounds, but still was in the top 10. Tooney had a good round as did Slayte.

It then hit me after the event that I could have had 2 perfect routines in 1 day if it wasn’t for a single throw being off by about 2″ in height.

I’ll leave the post with a learning lesson. When photographing Enzo, be careful with the zoom. It’s easy for him to jump out of the frame.

I’m behind on posting again of course. First I wanted to post a couple of Enzo videos from an AKC trial a couple weeks ago. I don’t really remember the runs too much now but I know that Enzo is awesome! LOL.

AKC Nationals is coming up soon. We haven’t been too consistent lately. No big issues, just a tiny bit off. We’ve been doing quite a bit more ASCA than normal and the courses are so different. I’ve decided not to do any more ASCA until after AKC Nationals. Maybe that will help…

Slayte’s running contacts seems to be progressing well. I haven’t been obsessively taking video but took this one just to get a data point. I did a lot of board running with him and this was probably after a week or two on the low dogwalk. I’m having him run to a Manners Minder. Hopefully using that won’t create the crazy obstacle focus that Enzo has after the dogwalk. The first hit was a little high and there was one big leap somewhere in the middle but the rest were pretty nice. he seems to be really consistent lately and I am thinking about puttting my dogwalk back together and having him do the full height DW. I don’t have any video but I also used the PVC box on the board and DW when he was having trouble hitting where I wanted him to. I am approaching this a little differently than the general thinking and am mostly rewarding for location vs splitting feet. My theory is that if they understand where you want them to hit then the gait will happen naturally when they are driving. That’s how it worked for Enzo anyways and seems to be working for Slayte so far.

Friday was Slayte’s 1 year old Birthday! Time really flies! Here is a year in pictures! Love this dog!

1 day:

5 days:

4 weeks:

6 weeks:

10 weeks:

3 months:

4 months:

5 months:

6 months:

8 months:

10 Months:

1 year!

The morning started off with an AKC agility trial. Maybe Jenn will get the videos up that I recorded. Enzo looked awesome and won one run and missed an a-frame contact in the other run. Around noon, Jenn finished up with agility and we headed to a disc dog clinic.

I usually help out more with the clinics, particularly with people new to the sport, but we got there a bit late and things were already moving along. We did, however, make it in time for the mock toss/fetch competition. Tooney, Enzo and Slayte had their first taste of competition, even though it was just for fun. If we are on a big field with a bunch of people watching, they know it’s game time.

I think my throwing technique is continuing to improve. I had no warmup, but my throws were still going 47-50 yards. It was crazy. I went 1st with Slayte and I got two long throws out to him and he caught both. I had about 30 seconds left when he returned and Jenn and I decided to call the round at that time. He’s young and we want to keep it intense and fun. It was very warm and sunny out and he tends to run to the shade, but he didn’t do that. It was a good call and his round was a huge success. For Tooney, I had a solid round with her, but she had one miss. At the end I went with Enzo and he did awesome, catching every disc in the air at nearly 50 yards. He got 18 points, enough for 3rd place and won a free toy for Slayte to destroy.

Jenn got to play with all three dogs also. She had good rounds with all the dogs and I think each dog had one miss. She stopped her round with Slayte after three throws for the same reason I stopped my round and again it was a successful round for him.

I have been meaning to put up a list of goals for the 2012 disc dog season. My hope is to look at this at the end of 2012 and see how well I followed through and maybe check it throughout the year to remind myself of what we are trying to do. These are new goals or things that I still need to really work on. I will go in order of seniority.

Me:

– Avoid injury by not over practicing, despite sometimes wanting to practice for long periods of time. Keep it to 1-3 times per month at the park for 30ish minutes.

– Don’t throw anything short of the maximum point line in toss/fetch. Past 40 yards is normally my target.

– Work on getting a better air bounce and skip that can be used in routines confidently. I can execute the throws, but not in any conditions and with confidence.

– Be confident for the dogs and give them the best chance to excel and have fun. For them, having fun is running, jumping and catching discs. Put the disc where they have a chance to catch it every time.

Tooney:

– No injuries. She couldn’t compete most of 2010 due to injury and came back big in 2011 with some great performances and wins. It took half the season for her to get her stamina back, but she’s as good as ever right now.

– Continue doing her exercise ball at least every other day, preferrably 4-5 times a week to keep her strong.

– Keep it fun for her. If she is still running and happy at the end of every round, then I’m doing the right thing.

– Get Jenn some chances to compete with her. As Tooney is getting older, Jenn’s opportunities to really play with her are less and less. Tooney is the dog that really gave Jenn the chance to do well in agility, so she deserves more time with Toons. Jenn will never ask to have a round with her when I could be playing with her, but I have to do my best to get Jenn some opportunities. She is at the age where competing with two people is not possible, so we need to manage her play time wisely.

– Here’s a lofty goal – set a masters division record at our Skyhoundz Regional for either freestyle or toss/fetch points.

Enzo:

– Whatever Enzo does pretty much is golden to me. In my mind, he can do no wrong. (yes, this is a goal… the goal is to continue to think this way)

– Continue to put the discs in a place for him in toss/fetch that show him off and rack up big points. I feel so fortunate to have finally developed the rhythm, teamwork and skills to do this with him. Don’t lose it!!! He was good in 2010 and awesome in 2011.

– Come up with more unique throws/tricks for freestyle. I don’t want to make a higher % of tricks in my routine – just replace some I already have by big improvements to the trick itself or to the flow of the trick into the next sequence or from the previous sequence. Also consider replacing entire trick sequences if I am able to come up with something completely novel.

– Do more traditional types of things that people do to make their dogs look good. One thing I never did with Enzo was a distance multiple. (short, medium, long rapidly). I am doing this now. This is a skill neither he nor I had in the past. We do now. He looks great doing this. It’s traditional and so many people do it, but there’s a reason. Dogs look great catching lots of discs quickly and running/jumping. He does all of those in 1 sequence that lasts 5 seconds at most, but is a huge impression to everybody watching. Maybe do more things like this in the routine, but without losing my ingenuity.

Slayte:

– Stay on the field for the entire round. Keep his interest up, especially when it’s hot out or he’s showing that he may be distracted. Focus, fun and energy are the ingredients required.

– Improve catching ability. Hopefully he learns on his own, otherwise maybe try some softer discs that won’t bounce of the teeth as easily if his timing is a bit off. He tends to either not bite the disc deep in his mouth or he closes his mouth before he gets to the disc. The result is the disc bounces off his teeth.

– Try to put up a few big scores in toss/fetch because I know he can do it.

Wow – that is a lot of stuff.