Looks like we’re headed to “worlds” again this year. In a few weeks (July 23-27), Stillwater, MN (near Minneapolis) will host the 2008 Dock Dogs World Championships. There will be competitions for Big Air, Extreme Vertical, Speed Retrieve and something unique to this event - “Iron Dog”.
Alex has been invited for Speed Retrieve, Extreme Vertical and Iron Dog. Whitney is going to handle Alex in Speed Retrieve, I am going to handle him for Iron Dog and we decided to pass on E.V. so that we could focus on Speed Retrieve and Iron Dog. Whitney will also be handling Abby in the Iron Dog competition (our little yellow labs account for 20% of the Iron Dog field!)
We’re very proud of Abby and Alex for the invites to worlds this year and can’t wait to see and participate in the competition, I promise a good post or three from worlds this year!
Alex had a great 4th of July weekend. He got to go dock diving with mom and dad in Rockford at a Chicagoland Dock Dogs club event.
Of course Remi and Abby were there. Team Fergus was well represented even though F-dog himself was injured and couldn’t jump this weekend (get better soon tough guy!) Katie and Andy were still great cheerleaders even though their guy wasn’t jumping, Andy also judged and was a celebrity guest handler for a certain weasel-like dog that looks a bit like Alex (more on that later). Pam and Sue both jumped Flash, who earned a Novice title in one event - way to go! Whitney was there with Dillon who did a great job of chilling for the weekend (as he also suffered a minor injury and couldn’t jump) as his bro’ Rumor worked up some more courage on the dock.
Alex got to do Extreme Vertical and Speed Retrieve with mom and jumped Big Air with both mom and dad. Alex came in first place in Speed Retrieve and Big Air and second place in E.V. - pretty good if you ask me! Abby and Remi both had great weekends as well and can’t wait to tell you about them in their blogs (see links to the right)!
It’s been a while since I’ve updated Alex’s blog. Sorry!
Where should we start… I managed to not blog about our trip to the Super Retriever Series Crown Championship in late May. Alex and Abby were both invited to the Crown for the first time this year, which was held in Little Rock, Arkansas. We had a great time in Little Rock and hope we can make it again next year!
Unfortunately, the weather was a bit different than it was at home. The event was May 24th and 25th, we left very early in the morning on the 24th (~2:00am) and the temperature in Chicago was about 40 degrees. By the time we got to Arkansas and got the puppies out of the car it was almost 90 degrees. The look on Abby and Alex’s face said “not cool dad, not cool!” They didn’t adjust to the temperature change very well to say the least.
Alex was one of two dogs that qualified for both Super Fly (distance jump) and Super V (high jump). He ended up finishing in 6th place for both. His best Super Fly jump of the weekend was a 22′7″, he didn’t even make finals with his 6′6″ Super V jump, it was at this point (on the second day) that the weather was just too much. If we are fortunate enough to be invited back next year, Alex has requested that we roll into Little Rock a few days ahead of time to get him used to the weather. The folks at SRS threw a great event - one of the best times we’ve had doing dock jumping regardless of results! Congratulations to Stryker and Melissa on their Super V win and to Chris and Bear on their Super Fly win!!
Since SRS we’ve done a few agility events, Alex is still slowly improving but continues to knock bars more frequently than the rules allow for (i.e. about once per run.) We’ve been working hard on respecting the bars’ right to stay suspended in the air and hope to have some more positive results in the near future - we have quite a bit of agility planned over the next couple of months.
Aside from agility, we’ve also managed to log a few Dock Dogs events. Since the SRS Crown we’ve competed at a Chicagoland club event in Berwyn, a National event in Dubuque andlast weekend a National event in Evansville, IN.
Alex is doing great this year in Big Air andthe new sport called “Speed Retrieve”. Since he was doing well in E.V. last year, Alex has gained about 15 pounds, which we think accounts for his lack of “hops” when going for the bumper. Alex is currently ranked ~3rd nationally with his mom in Speed Retrieve, he’s a quick little swimmer andloves to make mom happy by “getting the duck”! His best in E.V. this year is 6′10″ (which he has only grabbed once this season). Big Air has been a strong spot for him, however. He had a great Big Air weekend in Berwyn and then went on to win the DubuqueSemi-Pro Big Air finals. Last weekendat Evansville was the highlight of Alex’s Big Air summer. He finished third in the Pro finals behindthe Outdoor Channel National Champion (the second place dog) and the winner of the event, some yellow lab named Abby Jo Kickass… that’s right, he was beat by a girl… his sister! The best part of the weekend was Alex’s new personal best in Big Air… 23′9″ - way to go Chops!!
Well, off to bed for now, we are in Rockford for the Chicagoland club event. Alex finished E.V. with mom tonight in 2nd place and looks forward to doing Speed Retrieve and Big Air with her tomorrow. So far his biggest Big Air jump of the weekend is 22′. We’ll post about that tomorrow night!
Word to the wise(r than me)… If you know you aren’t going to get the front cross in, rear cross.
Alex and crew (Abby, Remi, moms and pops (that’s me!)) spent the weekend at our favorite agility hot spot, the crystal lake indoor soccer facility that Alex refers to as “his house”. This weekend it was home to an AKC trial Friday - Sunday. What better way to spend a day off than an agility trial!
Friday got us “FAST” along with standard and jumpers. Saturday and Sunday were just standard and jumpers.
We ended the weekend with ZERO “Qs” out of 7 runs, what a pain in the ass!
For the record, we never taught Alex how to jump when we started doing agility. It is by far our biggest mistake in his agility career. This is one of those weekends that it came back to haunt us. We will be moving Alex to 26″ jumps in all events moving forward and following Susan Salo’s recently released “foundation jumping” program. I’ll report back to let you know when we start to see improvement.
Due to his lack of jumping ability I very often babysit jumps, send him extra wide, add crosses when not needed and do kinds of crazy things to give him the best chance to clear jumps. Some times it works, most times it doesn’t.
We actually should have received a “Q” and a blue ribbon from our FAST run but the judge was very quiet and the scribe was on the other side of the ring so our weave poles were not counted. We didn’t catch this until the next day when the trial secretary informed us that it was too late to do anything about it. Next time we’ll have to hang around for another hour or two until scores are posted. AKC trials often have some bureaucratic hiccup to keep you on your toes.
Regardless, we need to work on jumps and also our “two on, two off” performance. During Alex’s standard run on Saturday he had an off course due to me pulling back from a jump too soon. Like most off course’s this one resulted in Alex performing “bonus obsticles”, the last of which was the dog walk (for the second of three times). When I saw him coming down the dog walk, I told him “bottom”, he ignored me. I decided to go back to my original plan for the next two jumps (after which was a tunnel). I had planned on front-crossing after a pair of jumps and then sending him to the tunnel. Because he released himself from the dog walk, I had no prayer of getting the front cross in. But, like I said, that was my plan and I wanted to stick to it… so, I did the front cross. Alex had cleared jump number two before I was halfway done with my cross, he landed behind me and clipped the back of my knees, causing me to fall flat on my ass.
What happens when I fall on my ass on an agility course? Alex pounces on me and licks me (oh and Whitney, my loving wife, breaks into laughter that can be heard from 75′ away.) At least I was able to provide some entertainment to the massive crowd that often gathers around an agility course
I was fine but ended up having a pretty sore back for the next couple of days, thanks to Alex and my chiropractor Dr. Carl DeStefano I am 90% better and can’t wait for next weekend’s USDAA trial in Milwaukee!
Here’s Whitney’s compilation of the weekend’s runs (yes, including the comic relief. Steve, thanks again for the great camera work!!) …
Alex and I officially prefer USDAA over all other agility venues. We had a great time this weekend, an outdoor trial hosted by Quantum in Plainfield, IN gave us something to do this weekend. What an awesome place for an agility trial. Plainfield is a small suburb of Indianapolis and the event was held at “Pioneer Park” which is a great little park with a walking/bike trail that wrapped around the agility field and back through the woods - it was a GREAT place to walk the dogs before/between runs and gave us lots of places let them run (on leash of course!) I can definitely see making this an annual event!
So… Why is USDAA our favorite venue now? Many reasons, not the least of which is the number of runs. It’s like all the good of NADAC without all of the useless B.S. that makes NADAC frustrating! We got to run 12 times during the two day trial, nice!
Saturday was starters snooker (boy do we suck at this game, keeping Alex close to me is not something I’ve worked on a lot!! ye’ ol’ whistle after about 4 jumps!), starters jumpers (knocked half a dozen bars, I then walked him 200′ and he pooped, wasted run - my bad!), Grand Prix (1 knocked bar then missed the up contact on the dog walk and blew me off after self-releasing… we gave up on that run.), Steeplechase (no “Q” here either, the weaves were not staked down, causing them to basically slap himself in the face with them… not easy to finish that way!) plus three more runs…
The last three runs of the day were all “Qs” - yeah! 1st place in starters standard which was a fun run. Alex missed his weave enterance (which was tough… I didn’t set him up with enough room!) but then turned around, started over and fixed them himself, what a smart dude!) The 6th run of the day was Advanced Gamblers. Gamblers is Alex’s favorite USDAA class - he gets to make up the first part of the course then gets to work away from me for the ending, win-win! We pulled off another 1st place here with 40 points. The last class of the day (what! I was just getting into my grove!) was starters pairs, we were teamed up with a border collie named Ember who ran really well - we ended up in second place and earned our “Starters Pairs” title - cool, now we get to run with Abby and Whitney (who also earned their title) again in “Advanced” in the next USDAA trial.
Sunday wasn’t as profitable for us. We were zero for four in classes that mattered (gamblers, snooker, jumpers and standard) all due to knocked bars. On that note, Susan Salo’s “Foundation Jumping” DVD set has been ordered and is en route. We will let you know how much it helps us!!
The only “Q” we picked up on Sunday was from a “fun run” called “tunnels with a twist” which was a bit disappointing. Unlike the NADAC tunnelers courses that we have grown to love, this course was very, very tight and allowed very few strides between tunnels - not Alex’s kind of course. Abby and Whit weren’t in their element with it either but due to Abby’s kickassedness, they pulled off 2nd place over all (including all height classes and all Border Collies!)
This weekend was consumed by another agility trial, this time in Merrilville, IN with the “Paw Power Blues” agility club. The venue is nice (our second year trialing there) if not a little small. The courses were a little tight on Saturday but opened up a bit on Sunday.
Jumpers on Saturday was a very tight course with a couple of non-obvious off-courses. There was an off-course tunnel that at least half of the dogs took (including Alex) - I don’t think I could have sent him to it if I tried, oh well - no “Q” for jumpers.
The best news of the weekend was Alex’s standard run on Saturday which earned him his “OA” title, next stop Excellent A standard! The run did include an off course (one of which is allowed) and I believe a refusal at the table, but in open you can have one of each, so we eeked by with a “Q”.
Sunday brought Alex’s first ever “Excellent” standard run, which was not a “Q” but was a great run aside from a poor rear cross by me (which caused a bar to fall) and Alex’s knocking of the triple… we need to practice those more!
Sunday was also another shot at an open jumpers leg and another dropped bar at the triple (my “hey!” resulted in an off course tunnel as well… hey where better to hide from pops than in a damn tunnel!)
We stayed in Merrilville’s luxurious Red Roof Inn (they left the light on!) next to a nice, muddy pond which our room of course backed up to. The pond was useful for a swim for all three of the dogs and quite a few of their friends on Saturday night. Remi continued his passion of rescuing sticks whose life is being threatened by the evil water, Abby of course took her ball to anyone with a halfway decent throwing arm over and over and over and over again and Alex spent his time trying to intercept Abby’s fetches.
All in all it was a great weekend, we all had fun, Whit and Abby were more successful than us and and 1 for 4 sure beats another ohfer!
Until next time, here’s a compilation video of our runs that Whit put together…
Alex and crew spent the weekend at the AKC agility trial in St. Charles with the Fox Valley Dog Training Club (FVDTC). I was filming a seminar on Saturday so Whitney got a chance to run with Alex in open standard and open jumpers. I ran Alex on Sunday in the same.
Let’s just say that running Abby and running Alex are two different handling experiences. Whit got to run Alex in class a couple of times last week to get used to it but trying to run both of them on the same day is just a bit much to handle. As has happened a few times in the past, Whitney was brought to laughter while running Alex in standard. The way Whitney tells the story Alex fell off of the dog walk on the way up (this was not the funny part, she was very concerned that he might have hurt himself and felt really bad). As the judge was instructing Whitney to “go on” and not repeat the dog walk, Alex had already run back to the beginning, tried (successfully) again and was waiting at the far end in his 2 on/2 off. Whitney and the judge both laughed as Alex was clearly not effected by the fall. He was sick of waiting for his handler so he took off and completed a few obstacles on his own (a chute, weaves and a couple of jumps). Whitney then picked him up and completed the course. The one obstacle that she was hoping to work was the table. Alex decided that he didn’t want to “down” on the table and instead did a “bow” for more than a few seconds! He did eventually “down” and completed the course as happy as could be! He loves running agility and had to throw in a few bonus obstacles in this run! Their jumpers run wasn’t as eventful but as I hear it was a very nice run with no knocked bars, just an unfortunate wrong course.
Sunday came and I was able to make the trial and run Alex. We waited around for a few hours (in typical “open” or “novice” class fashion). By the time we got to run Alex was quite excited. Alex’s standard run is one of my most proud runs with him in his short agility “career”. He did everything perfectly with the exception of releasing himself from the teeter a hair before I gave him his release word. Still, he finished the open standard course in 40.07 seconds (21 seconds quicker than the second place dog). Here is the run:
Alex’s jumpers run on Sunday came about 10 minutes after his standard run. He was still pumped but I had concentrated way too much on standard and wasn’t connected with him enough in the opening sequence of jumpers. I handled the fourth jump awkwardly and sent him off course. As is typically the case, after this happened all hell broke loose and he knocked a half dozen or so bars and took another wrong course. Once we disconnect it’s usually hard to reconnect during the same run - he sees it as his “fun time”. We’ll have to concentrate on jumpers “Qs” next time!
Our friends Katie and Andy with their Goldens, Ryder and Fergus stayed with us Saturday night to avoid the trip to and from the city (since this trial was 10 minutes from home for us… nice!) Alex, Remi and Abby got a chance to run around with their “hippy lab” friends Saturday night and Sunday morning, in case the trial wasn’t enough for them.
Alex also had to listen to us play “rock band” until the wee hours of the night… not one of his favorite uses for his highly sensitive canine ear drums!! Poor dude!
All in all, Alex had a GREAT weekend and is still twice as happy as any other being on this planet! Alex gets this coming weekend off, then it’s off to a USDAA trial the weekend after, he can’t wait!
Alex spent the weekend doing his favorite activity and asked me to post about it. We attended the NADAC trial in Crystal Lake for the second Easter in a row and (due to the fact that it was an agility trial) Alex had an absolute blast!
Saturday was pretty productive with an 18.94 second, first place run in Elite tunnelers (earning Alex his TN-E title!) at 7.39 yps and a first place, 28.19 second (including a “re-weave”) run in Open Weavers (earning Alex his WV-O title!). Alex had a few issues with the very low (to him) 20″ jumps that are used in NADAC… knocking bars in his other four runs.
Sunday was lots of fun for Alex! He got to run with mom for the first time in a while. It was his last run of the weekend and he definitely had fun with it! Whitney and Alex pulled in a first place run in Open Touch ‘n’ Go with a 5.79 yps very clean run! It’s worth noting that if Alex was in Elite Touch ‘n’ Go, this time would have still been good for a first place! Alex also got his first “Q” in Elite regular, and therefore his first blue ribbon in that class
As usual, the RACE agility club put on a great event and we all had a good time! I did get a “talking to” about Alex’s weaves for the second NADAC trial in a row. One of the two judges approached me and explained his criteria for judging the “safe performance” of weave poles, stating that Alex’s performance is borderline in his opinion but that the sets of weave poles being used at the trial didn’t allow him to make a complete judgment, in this case we were given the benefit of the doubt. This does make me further question NADAC as an agility venue. We will certainly favor AKC and USDAA agility trials when given the option. I will note that this judge did seem to care that the weave pole performance might be harmful to Alex and did take the time to explain how this can be determined in his and NADAC’s opinion. We have reviewed a lot of Alex’s weave performances and don’t feel that they are unsafe nor that they meet NADAC’s definition of “unsafe”, however as we will likely continue to be faulted for them you probably won’t see Alex performing at as many NADAC trials.
Whitney put together a great compilation of Alex’s runs from this weekend, enjoy…
All in all it was a great way to spend our Easter weekend. As usual, abby and Whitney were very successful and racked up the Q’s, be sure to check in with Abby on her blog!
Alex’s little brother Remi is still recovering from “happy tail”, he did have to have a short section of the end of his tail removed but he is still in rediculously high spirits and can’t wait to get back out dock jumping and doing agility with his big bro’. Remi will turn two next month… he was born on Easter of 2006 and hasn’t stopped hopping since!
Next weekend I am headed to Indianapolis for some USDAA agility. I am psyched. We are leaving Friday night and staying in a hotel. Mom and Dad are not early birds so a hotel is a safe way to go. If we missed any of our runs, I would probably cry!
Two weeks ago, I did some Dock Dogs at the Chicagoland Outdoors Show. It was great fun, but I came down with cold tail and I couldn’t participate in the finals. I LOVED Speed Retrieve. Mom just pointed at this duck and I knew the rest. I finished first in the top 8, and I should have won, but I wasn’t able to play in the final round due to my tail. I am going to give it another shot soon… I want to improve on my current best time of 6.30 seconds! I also grabbed 6′8″ and jumped in the 21′ range for most of the weekend. Not bad for indoors! I’ve been a couch potato all winter so mom is really happy with how I did.
I still love agility more though. On February 16, I am going to visit Preacher’s mom for some special agility lessons. Two whole hours worth of agilities!! I cannot think of a better way to spend a Saturday, personally. And of course, I’m still in Sherry’s class and it is the greatest. Every Tuesday I watch out the window for dad to come home and I’m ready to go, my bag packed with a toy, some treats, and my leash. Once we get close to Sherry’s place, I start to scream a little bit. I can’t help it! Sherry said I am doing really good. She also said Remi looks good. I have to make sure I don’t let him catch up to me.
I will have to write again after my USDAA trial. We are going to begin doing a lot more USDAA now, after what happened in NADAC last month. I had one of the nicest runs of my weave pole career and the judge disqualified me for being “unsafe”. Sad, I really do love some things about NADAC (lots of running fast, and tunnelers!) but I was sad to be penalized for something I worked really hard on.
Here is the video of my unsafe run:
And finally, a sad photo- is this my last tunnelers run?
Thanksgiving weekend, we had a NADAC Agility trial in Crystal Lake, IL.
It was a great trial, three days full of fun, and lots of agility!
Alex’s results:
Novice Jumpers 1st place and title (6.8 yps)
Open Regular 1st place (4.34 yps)
Novice Weavers 1st place and title (5.79 yps)
Open Jumpers Q (timers were broken)
Open Regular 2nd place (our lab bud Trapper took first!)
Open TouchNGo 1st place
Elite Tunnelers 2nd place (6.58 yps, 101.25 DRI)
Open Weavers 1st place
Alex had a few difficulties hitting his weaves with Grant. I ran him in Open Weavers and his weaves were perfect! He got a little tunnel happy, so no Q, but I was after the perfect weaves more than the Q for that one.
