Turkey Day!

No agility class this week - it's Thanksgiving!

With all the leftovers and table scraps available at most Turkey Day dinners, it's probably a good time to remind people what they shouldn't give dogs to eat. Almost everyone knows not to feed chocolate to dogs. Here are some of the less obvious:

• Bones from fish, poultry (Bones, especially turkey/chicken bones, can shatter and cause obstruction)
• Raisins (if you include it in your stuffing)
• Onion or Onion Powder
  
• Macadamia Nuts
• Yeast Dough
• Xylitol (Artificial Sweeteners)
  

Of course, the list expands if your dog has specific allergies. Do a search for more information. Keep those dogs healthy and active!

Cynosport Pictures

We've been inundated with requests for pictures from our trip to Cynosport. After getting settled, we finally got around to getting them posted!

2009 Cynosport Games

Mo Starts Puppy Agility Class

Fresh from our trip to Arizona, we started puppy agility class at Dog Haven with Mo!

For those of you who are interested in starting agility, we'll try and give you a good picture of what to expect here. It certainly is a humbling experience going through the beginner class now that we've been trialing with our other dog, Harley, for several years now. As an added bonus, we had several friends in the class with us (Susette & Archie, Katie & Rosy, with Laura co-teaching with Deb!)

First class is all about acclimating dogs to the obstacles. There are a lot of different obstacles you will encounter on an agility course, and it takes time for you dog to 1) get used to what the heck they are and 2) consistently perform the obstacle correctly on command. The best advice is to GO SLOW!!!! Don't do too much too fast. Don't expect your dog to start agility and be in a trial next month. Training too hard could lead to injury due to unsafe execution of obstacles, or your dog could just burn out and decide "I hate this agility class mom and dad make me go to!"

This class we focused on leg awareness exercises, and acclimation to jumps, weave polls, and the A-Frame.

The leg-awareness exercises included walking over polls, and going through the agility ladder. Each of these are designed to make your dog aware of where they are putting their feet. This is important when they have to negotiate a dog walk or teeter, where it is very narrow, and they have to hit the contact zone.

Mo was definitely scared of the A-Frame at first. With a scared dog, DON'T FORCE IT! Take it slow so that they learn to enjoy the tasks at hand. Forcing it creates a negative experience and will make them not want to continue. Mo is proof of this. After taking it slow, he was LOVING the frame by the end of class.

Weave Polls are the hardest thing to teach a dog to do. Think about it: a dog has to enter the weaves with its left shoulder, then know to weave in and out of each poll and not skipping any. This is not something a dog naturally knows how to do! It takes a LOT of work to get good, consistent weaves. In this class, we started going through the weaves in a V-Channel. Each weave poll is angled so when you look down the center, it looks like a V. The dogs walk through the center. This method gets them used to picking up their feet going through the polls, and learning to go straight through the polls.

After instruction, we had some free play time at the end of class to practice. All in all, it felt great to be back to square one with a new dog! Laura did a wonderful job taking duties as a first time instructor under Deb. We're looking forward to next week!

Arizona & The Cynosport World Games

Just returned from our trip out west to the Cynosport World Games in Scottsdale, AZ. What an experience! We were very fortunate for Laura (James' sister) and her son Ewan to accompany us from Iowa.

We left on Wednesday, November 11th flying to Phoenix with a layover in Dallas/Ft Worth. Harley did very well in the airport and on the plane, although the Charlotte ticket counter gave us a little trouble. After picking up our rental car and getting to the hotel, it was already 12:30 AM (2:30 ET) and we had to be at the trial site at 7:00!

Thursday's itinerary included our Performance National Standard agility run and dock diving. Cynosport certainly tests your handling and course memorization as everyone walks in the morning, but you and your dog might not run it until hours later. Luckily for James, our scheduled run time was only about 1.5 hours after the walk-through.

The course was tough, and as such, I decided to be cautious and conservative in my plan. When we ran, I found myself VERY nervous, and it showed. Harley was a good sport and kept with me, but dropped the second to last jump bar, which I can only blame myself for since I didn't put her in a good position. I tried doing a rear-cross after the weaves (18) but realized Harley didn't have enough momentum yet, and my rear made her jump early. She landed on the bar (19). As always, I congratulated Harley at the finish for a great run. The dropped bar had put us just short of advancing to the Semifinals.

The Splash Dogs Dock Diving competition started shortly after our agility run. We did 3 'waves' during the course of the day, and each wave includes 2 jumps, the higher of which determines your score. We posted consistent jumps around the 18 and 19 foot marks, with our longest jump being 20 feet 6 inches.

Friday was Kristen's turn on the Performance Speed Jumping Semifinals course. Unlike the previous day, our run was not as close to the walk-through. Kristen walked the course around 8:00am, and her run was not scheduled until 2:20pm! Despite the long wait, Kristen kept the course fresh in her mind by watching other competitors' runs throughout the day. Harley did very well again, but missed her weave poll entry. She didn't get any faults for it, but the time taken to reset her back in the weaves put us outside of the top dogs. Only the top eight dogs in each height class advanced, and the slowest time of the eight in our height was 25 seconds!

We had 3 more waves of Dock Diving on Friday, and each jump was around the 17 to 19 foot mark. Harley made an impression on the announcer, who frequently remarked on her good form and how beautiful she was.

Saturday was a down day. We did one dock diving wave in the morning and then decided to drive out to the Grand Canyon as neither of us had ever been. The drive from Scottsdale was about 3.5 hours though the desert and mountains near Flagstaff. To our surprise, we drove through a snow flurry! It had been in the 70's in Scottsdale, and we were a bit unprepared for how cold it would be at the Grand Canyon. Despite the cold temperatures, the views were breathtaking. Our only regrets were not having more time to wander (we got there an hour before sunset) and not bringing warmer clothes!

Sunday went very quickly. James ran the European Jumpers course. Harley didn't do very well as she was very distracted during the run. I can't blame her - it had been a long week and she was doing much more than she would do at a normal trial.

We did qualify for the Dock Diving finals on Sunday, but unfortunately we couldn't compete since we had to catch our flight home.

After our run, we packed up everything and headed to the airport. After 2 long flights, we picked up our puppy, Mo, from my parents' house. We finally made it home at 12:30am, just in time to go to sleep and go to work the next morning!

Even though we didn't advance past the first rounds, we throughly enjoyed ourselves. USDAA knows how to put on a great trial and treat the competitors right! We hope to qualify again this coming year, especially since it was announced that the Cynosport Games would be heading east to either Philadelphia or somewhere in Kentucky.

Our next trial is in December, wish us luck!