Neiko and I did our first disc dog competition this weekend. I
thought I'd share for those interested.
There were 68 competitors, the
most ever they said...some even came up from OH to compete. It was very cool and
we had perfect weather (70 and sunshine all day with just enough wind to float a
frisbee).
I entered Neiko and I in Novice toss and fetch as well as
Freestyle. My niece (6 yr old) and my friends niece (4 yr old) both wanted to
compete so they used Neiko in the Jr. division of Toss and Fetch.
Pro
toss and fetch went first. Man, can those people throw the disc. The dogs were
great too.
Next up was Novice toss and fetch. I was super anxious/nervous
and threw the first frisbee off course. The 2nd frisbee, Neiko caught (yay).
However, when he caught the frisbee our friends/family cheered from the
sidelines. Neiko heard all of the cheering and promptly went over to them,
shaking is butt to soak up all of the applause. He then left the frisbee with my
family/friends and trotted happily back to me with his tongue hanging out.
We
scored a whopping 1.5 points (haha!)
Then came the first round of the Jr.
toss and fetch. My niece and my friends niece both did pretty good for their
ages. However, Neiko is used to working with me. So, they'd throw the frisbee,
he'd catch it then bring it to me and drop it at my feet instead of theirs. That
required a bit of scrambling but they still had some good throws and catches and
best of all they had a lot of fun. My niece missed getting 3rd place by half a
point. She was super bummed because they had some great trophies, but when I
told her that she scored 6.5 points to my 1.5 points, that cheered her up
considerably.
I drew 2nd for freestyle. On my way there that morning I
suddenly remembered that I needed music for our freestyle routine.
Unfortunately, I only had 1 CD in my car, Seed (a German reggae band). So, I
spent the hour drive to Waterford trying to pick out a song on the fly - of
course it was not in English!
We did much better in freestyle than we did
in T&F. Neiko caught everything I threw at him and even did a few tricks
here and there.
He refused the back vault and the leg vault though. He decided
to go around me instead of over. Oh well.
Unfortunately, by the time we got to the T&F round of the
freestyle division, Neiko was completely burned out. I threw out the first toss,
he caught it then went running over to play with a doggy friend he saw on the
sidelines. Doh.
This was the temp. shade I had for the dogs. I don't have an easy up yet so we spread a tarp over the exercise pen. The poor dogs looked like they were in jail all day.
Over all it was a great experience and tons of fun. We'll
be doing another one in a couple of weeks. I didn't take too many because I was busy scrambling
around all day.