USDDN Fun N The Sun

This past Saturday our disc dog club held a USDDN qualifier. Kind of a small event for a qualifying event but that doesn't take away from the fun! It was pretty windy and that impacted almost everyone's game, including Jack's of course. He did well on his first round with Tali and well on his toss n fetch round with her however he tried to alter his routine on the 2nd round to account for the wind and very quickly found himself in a mess so half way through he just quit trying and was laughing his way through it. Needless to say it was his worst freestyle in a long time! The good news is that almost everyone seemed to have similar problems and thus despite his issues he and Tali still qualified for USDDN finals in freestyle. They almost qualified in toss n fetch as well and that was with Jack throwing short tosses to build Tali's confidence back up. Seems she is still a little spooked from her quad experience and wasn't going all out for the tosses but I think that last round of TNF and going short really helped. We plan to get her out several places between now and the UFO local to continue to rebuild her confidence.



Jack played with Maximo in freestyle just to give the little guy experience of doing freestyle in a competition environment. They have no routine and certainly don't have several of the elements required of USDDN freestyle but it was all for fun and for experience. Max did good in his first round (with a little bit of getting side tracked looking for french fries on the sideline) and great in his 2nd round. Jack made a point to keep him more engaged and reward him with tugging in that round. Even with his modified freestyle Maximo was a crowd favorite. He had a lot of folks coming up to him telling him how cute he was and such. He was eating it up! He's a cool little dog! My mom, dad, Aunt Barbara, sister, brother in law and nephews all came out to the competition and got to see him play. He's got quite the little fan club going! It's really going to be fun to see Jack and Max grow as a team as Maximo plays so much different than our other dogs. He'll definitely teach Jack as much or more as Jack teaches him!



On a Groovy note... I brought her along this weekend and made a point to take time to be there for her and work through some of her fear. There were definitely points where she didn't want to come out of her crate but she was never shaking like at the Challenge. I had planned to even crate her out of the car but she seemed to be doing well so kept her at the tent. Towards the last part of the day I took her out and played some disc with her on the side and she did great. After the competition was over Jack did the same and again she did great. I think she's gonna be alright in the long run... we just have to be patient and not overwhelm her. I also think I've figured out that she does better if her crate isn't covered. That way she can see what the noises are and not get so freaked out by them. It's a theory anyway... we'll see if it holds true.

This weekend coming up Tali and I have a CPE trial. Groovy will be along for the ride. It's a really small trial and at the same location where we herd so I'm betting she'll do well but we'll still take it all in in very small doses.