Blog & Colorado 24 May 2007 03:03 pm
Dog People
Our dog Dakota was in her first frisbee competition this last Saturday. It was a Skyhoundz open qualifier event and there were teams there from all over the country including Washington, Florida, Texas, Minnesota, and a guest judge from Connecticut. We’d attended the Spring Training the previous week which was hosted by the the Colorado Disc Dogs club, who also hosted the competition we attended. We entered the novice division for distance and accuracy (throw and catch) and both Loni and I threw with Dakota, so she got to run twice in each round. In this event you have a bordered field that’s 50 yards long with five 10 yard zones. It isn’t a perfect rectangle but rather it narrows at each end with the widest zones being in the middle. You can throw from whichever side you prefer, but have to stay on the side you pick for the duration. You’re given 60 seconds to score as many points as possible. The 1st zone is 0 points, the 2nd is 1 point, the 3rd is 2 points, the 4th is 3 points, and the 5th zone is 5 points. Needless to say we needed more practice than Dakota as she caught every well thrown disc, with bonus points (you get a half point extra if all 4 paws are off the ground at the time of the catch), that came her way. I ended up sending one frisbee into a tent and was alot more nervous than I expected to be. Her best score overall between the 2 of us was 9th out of 20 in the novice division. I’ll be damned though if she wasn’t one of the fastest dogs out there and she got alot of attention from the other handlers. The next competition we’ll be going to is June 9th.
We saw some amazing dogs and handlers in the freestyle competition which is what most of the out-of-state teams were competing in. The majority of the dogs were border collies followed by cattle dogs, but there were other breeds as well and the best dog, in my opinion, that we saw was actually a bull terrier. This dog was crazy, it would jump up, hit its handlers chest/hip, do a back-flip off of him and catch a frisbee in mid-air/mid-flip. This was all in the middle of the routine too which was full of other impressive moves both by the dog and his handler.
Watch for ‘kota in the 2008 outdoor games.
-Matt
on 24 May 2007 at 3:38 pm 1.Eric said …
Right on. What kind of disc are you throwing with? You should get a “Dogobie” if you don’t already have one. It’s made by Aerobie the the bad ass disc company that makes the farthest, smoothest throwing discs you can get. I’m a bit of a frisbee snob, and I’m always telling people to get an Aerobee.
http://aerobie.com/Products/Dogobie.htm
on 24 May 2007 at 6:34 pm 2.Matt said …
Yeah, well we only use/train with regulation Wham-O Fastback discs or HyperFlite K-10 discs… so… ya know…
/snob
on 24 May 2007 at 9:12 pm 3.Eric said …
are those specially formulated for canines? heh, are you playing any disc golf out there? I’ve been playing a lot lately in Oregon. Sweetest spot 17miles out of town. It’s an 18hole elevation course that you can legally drink at! Doesn’t get much better than that.
on 25 May 2007 at 9:22 am 4.Matt said …
I think the Hyperflite ones are… and who ever cared about legally drinking anyways?
on 26 May 2007 at 2:38 pm 5.Loni said …
Ummm… you got tenth not nineth =0)
on 26 May 2007 at 4:10 pm 6.Matt said …
That’s not how we’re going to remember it… 9th I say!
on 30 May 2007 at 12:40 pm 7.Kris said …
my cat fetches garbage! yeah! so ha!
on 31 May 2007 at 12:46 pm 8.Matt said …
Have you tried throwing it to her and see if she/he will catch it in mid-air? I suggest you start with leftovers…