Jazz's 5th Birthday

Today we celebrated Jazz's fifth birthday.  She's had a wonderful year, earning her Rally championship (RAE) and her CPE Agility championship (C-ATCH), as well as excelling in her role as best friend and snuggle buddy!

As always, we celebrated with a doggie birthday cake.  Jazz even got a birthday card and an extra bag of homemade treats from the bakery!

Since it was Jazz's big day, we gave her the first shot at nibbling on the cake, and as you can see, she enjoyed every bite.

Of course, no party is complete without the whole gang, so we let Tess and Indy in to share Jazz's cake.  All of the dogs know about birthday cakes, and Tess even recognized the box from the bakery when I brought it home!!

As you can see, we have no problems with our dogs sharing goodies.  They all dove right in and demolished the cake and then cleaned the crumbs off the floor.  Now all three are contentedly napping in their dog beds with bellies full of birthday cake!!

Jazz's litter was known as "The Bathtub Gang," because their breeder snapped a photo of all 10 puppies in a bathtub that became the cover of her book, A Tail of Ten Puppies.  Today, LaDonna sent us a Smilebox slideshow of some of the outtakes from the bathtub photos.  You can view that here.

In some ways, it seems likes the five years we have had Jazz have just flown by, and in other ways, it seems like Jazz and I have been together forever.  This is the dog I call "Mini Me" because we are so much alike.  Words cannot express how much joy Jazz brings me, whether as a team in the obedience, rally, or agility ring or gaiting along with me and Rocky out on the trail or just snuggling at home on the couch.  I can't imagine life without my little brown Dal and look forward to many more birthday celebrations.

Indy Digs Tunnels!

Indy and the girls got to do a Tunnelers Fun Run last Friday evening out at B&D Creekside Activity Center in Latrobe.  It was a benefit for the Latrobe Police Department K-9, Rocky.

Keep in mind that Indy only ran his first full course the prior week at run-throughs and has never run a Tunnelers course.  That said, here is his run:

Indy and Jim ran this course like they had been doing this for years!  For most of the event, Indy had the fastest time of any dog, until our friend Tracy's T-Bone ran.  T-Bone is a wicked fast Border Collie, who beat Indy's time by 3 seconds.  However, Indy did have the fastest time among the 24-inch dogs and earned a very nice first place decorated dog bone and a refrigerator magnet.  Not bad for 14 months old!!

I understand that approximately $550 was raised from the Tunnelers Fun Run to help the Latrobe Police Department with Rocky's expenses.  Rocky and his handler attended the event, so we got to meet them.  Our dogs had a fabulous time and we were glad to help this worthy cause.

Indy's First Run-Through

Here's a video of Indy's very first full agility course run at B&D Creekside Activity Center yesterday.  Although he had a few bobbles, Jim was really pleased at how well Indy handled himself on course, since up until this point, they had only done shorter sequences.

As you can see in the video, Indy uses those long legs to go FAST!!  We're going to try him in a Tunneler's fun run this weekend.  I'm sure he'll love that, as tunnels are one of his favorite obstacles.

Buddies

There's nothing like a little game of bitey-face wrestling to cement a new friendship between two black and white boys.

Here's Indy and Mariann and Jim's Border Collie puppy Blaze as they roll around and chew on each other yesterday.  

Indy is such a good play buddy.  He can be over the top when he plays with his best playmate, Belgian Malinois Cocoa, or he can tune it down and play with a young puppy like Blaze.  He matches his style of play to whatever dog he is playing with.

Indy's Weekend

Not wanting to left out of all the hoopla, Indy brought home a few pretty pieces of polyester this weekend from the Splash 'n Dash APDT Rally trial!

Indy started the weekend with his first run in Level 1A with a very nice 204, with first place.  He followed that with a third place 207 and a first place 209 to earn his APDT Rally Level 1 title.  Once again, because his first three scores in Level 1 were above 190, Indy will also receive an Award of Excellence.

We then had a slight meltdown in Level 1B (Indy was totally distracted by his best girlfriend Cocoa, who was next in the ring), but still came away with a nice qualifying score of 196.  Since Indy had done so well, I decided to move him into Level 2A for the last trial of the weekend, which was Indy's first-ever off-lead class in a trial.

Indy had a near-perfect run in Level 2A and scored 207, with second place.  His only point deduction came on a moving down when Indy chose only to down his front end and assume the play bow position, looking at me expectantly and wagging his tail!!  I stared at him hard, trying to will that back end to go down, but I ultimately had to give him a second command to down and we lost 3 points.  He did everything else flawlessly, including a tough bonus exercise, and I was thrilled with his performance.

Wherever we go, Indy makes friends, and this weekend was no exception.  I got many compliments on what a nice working dog Indy is and what a lovely disposition he has.  At just over 13 months, I can't tell you how pleased we've been with Indy's training and his performance in trials thus far.  He is continuing his obedience and agility training and we are looking forward to putting him in the agility ring when he reaches 18 months of age.  

Extraordinaire Wildcard for Tess

Jazz wasn't the only one bringing home big, pretty ribbons this weekend.  Tess earned her Extraordinaire Wildcard (ExWC) title at the same agility trial in Washingtonville, OH.

This is Tess' second Extraordinaire title, which requires 30 qualifying scores in the Championship level of a class, in this case, Wildcard.  All of these are working towards Tess' CPE Agility Team Extraordinaire (C-ATE) title.  Go, Tess!

C-ATCH Jazz!!!

It was a big weekend for the Bauer Dals and I'll require a couple of posts to cover all the excitement, but we'll deal with the biggest news first:

Yesterday, in Washingtonville, OH, Jazz earned her CPE Agility Trial Champion (C-ATCH) title!!!  Jazz needed two Standard runs going into this trial and qualified on Saturday and got that last Standard leg she needed yesterday to finish her Championship.

Jazz and Jim are shown above with Judge Jackie Oricko.

Here's Jim and Jazz with her ribbon and the beautiful C-ATCH bar made for her by her biggest fans, Aunt Mariann and Uncle Jim.  Our agility buddies also had two lovely cakes to celebrate Jazz's accomplishment.  We are grateful for everyone's support of our little brown Dal.  Also, a big thank-you to Uncle Jim for taking photos on Jazz's big day.