Short Ride

I was thinking about going kayaking this weekend but May Gray and/or June Gloom is in full force especially at the beach. It's not too much fun kayaking in cool gloomy weather. So I got the bike out and took a short ride to the top of Santa Paula. These were taken from the Santa Paula hospital parking lot.  Santa Paula was far enough inland to escape the gloom.

A rare selfie!

Yesterday I took a herding lesson  to get some extra practice in before Dottie's first trial next weekend. I moved her up from HT to PT. PT is still the step before novice but it is not the lowest step like HT. She's doing great and I think we should do well unless the sheep are very light, which means they won't the dog get close at all. We haven't dealt with sheep like that before. We shall see!

USDAA

USDAA weekend for Dottie and I at the new Happy Dog location. It is only about 15 minutes from my house on a horse ranch.  I really liked it. It was good weekend for us. However, I need 2 standard legs for our MAD (master agility dog title, somewhat equivalent to an Excellent agility title in AKC), with 2 different judges, and I didn't get any. This is too bad because usually there is only one judge at a trial so that means even if I get lucky and get 2 Qs at one trial, I still won't have the title.  Drat. But, we did get our first Super Q!  You need 3 Super Qs for the ADCH, the champion title, and I have trouble getting them, so that was great! On Sunday we Qed and placed in Snooker, Gamblers and Jumpers, and on Monday- Jumpers, Gamblers and Pairs.

This horse was watching me teach the dogs the skateboard trick and she though she should get a dog treat.  I got permission to feed her apples from a tree and she was placated.  I think she might be an Andalusian. 

Pie is  not pictured because she views horses as prey. I can control her, but I didn't want to take any chances that I might get distracted while talking a picture. This is also why Pie is not herding. Dottie and Fancy are totally neutral towards horses. It is interesting, I'd think they might at least take a passing interest but nope.

Besides running Dottie, teaching tricks and petting the horse, I also worked a bunch of classes and got $34 towards my next entry.  Nice!

Dottie Crawls

I'm making a video of my dog's tricks, but it will take a while.  While you wait, here is a video of Dottie crawling.  She is the only one who does it well so she gets her own video.  Lucky.

AKC National Agility Championship

We traveled to Reno again this year for the AKC Nationals.  Only Dottie was entered this year.  My goal was for 1 clean run (and hopefully a placement!) in the regular classes.  Sadly, I didn't meet my goal, but happily I was "thrown a bone" when Dottie won the 24 inch Premier Standard Class!  She won $102 also!  I will post the videos at some other time, but I was very surprised we qualified, much less won. The Premier Class is an extra hard standard class and I was totally late on all my cues, didn't get where I needed to be, and even forgot the course at one point!  And yet we still won.  Dottie is so good.

Dottie's first place ribbon.

Our 3 runs in the regular courses were not clean.  Standard was good but I think we had a bar.  Jumpers was a disaster.  I couldn't quite get my head around it and it showed.  Hybrid was good but also not clean.

Here are some other pictures from our trip.

Fancy watching the competition.

Most days our jump height competed last, so I was the last car in the parking lot.

Dottie thinks this tractor is sexy.

It was a long and boring drive.

The pictures I ordered for the competition came in the mail today.  I think they all show how athletic Dottie is and how hard she tires.  All pictures by Great Dane Photos.