Top Spots for Agility 2009

I'm so proud to report that Tess has once again been named one of the Dalmatian Club of America's Top Spots for Agility for competition during 2009!!

This year -- drumroll, please -- Tess was ranked #1 in Open Standard and #9 in both Excellent A Standard and Excellent A Jumpers with Weaves. This is for AKC competition only and does not include her many accomplishments in CPE, USDAA, and NADAC.

Big congratulations to Tess and her awesome handler, Jim!! These two embody all that agility should be...building a relationship with your dog and having FUN. Tess and Jim continue to grow as a team and we look forward to their continued success in 2010!

Early Valentine's Wish

We're heading out early tomorrow morning for Valentine's weekend at a USDAA trial. Not exactly spine-tingling romance, but, hey, it's what we like to do! Anyway, since we won't be home to post on Valentine's Day, we decided to send our Valentine's greeting to all our blog friends a little early.

Tess and Jazz hope you all have a Valentine's Day that's way cool!!

A Little Bit of Snow!

We had quite the snowstorm last evening, dumping more than 20" of the white stuff on us overnight!

The first thing we had to do at 5:30 this morning was shovel the yard so the girls could go! It's hard to tell from these photos, but the snow is higher than Tess and Jazz! Tess is 22" at the withers, and if she jumps in the snow, all that shows is her head!

Here's Tess and Jazz trying to dig an escape tunnel. The snow is so high that it's like a natural dog fence!

Tess is sure the yard is under there somewhere.

Agility, anyone? The blue poles sticking out of the snow are our jump standards. The bar set at the 20" jump height is not even visible! You can also notice how much of the dog walk is buried. Something tells me that the girls won't be running this course any time soon!

New Agility Photos

Here are a couple new agility photos of Jazz, taken at the CPE trial over the New Year. What cracks me up is how serious Jazz looks in all these pictures. When Tess runs, she has a twinkle in her eyes and a smile on her face, but Jazz is all business! Like Tess, the little brown girl loves to jump, and she had a lot of fun on these courses.

Jazz ran so well for me at this trial that we're going to try a couple USDAA runs in mid February. The difficulty level is definitely higher in USDAA, but Jazz has been consistently running well for me lately and we're ready to give it a try!

CPE Trial Videos

The video above is of Tess and Jim's Jackpot run on New Year's Day. For those of you not familiar with Jackpot, there is an opening period where you do obstacles to accumulate points, and when the whistle blows, the dog and handler must complete the Jackpot sequence, which is done at a distance (there is a piece of orange tape on the floor that the handler cannot cross). In this case, the Jackpot was a wicked sequence of tunnel, angled set of six weaves, then into another angled set of six weaves, and to the table (all of which must be completed in the allotted time period, or you lose ALL your points). It sort of looks easy on the video because of the camera angle, but many dogs and handlers did not complete the sequence properly. Jim and Tess did an awesome job!

Next up is Jazz's Standard run with me. She really ran nicely and did very well until I got dazzled by her performance and forgot about my front cross after the A-Frame (oops) and then I didn't realize how far out Jazz would land after the tire and didn't call her back in time for her to get on the dogwalk easily. Despite my poor handling, Jazz qualified with second place in this run! In fact, Jazz qualified and placed in all four of her runs over the weekend, but most importantly, she ran happy and seems to have gained some confidence.

Tess also did well, qualifying and placing in 13 of her 17 runs over the four days. Our adopted Border Collie Sammie had a perfect weekend, qualifying in all eight runs on Saturday and Sunday (as well as many qualifying runs on Thursday and Friday)! Sammie had a terrific time running with his Mom again, although Jim helped out some, too. He just loves revving up that Ferrari!!

A Strange Kind of Love

Over the New Year's holiday, we stayed out in Ohio for a four-day CPE agility trial with our friends Mariann and Jim and their two dogs, Rocky and Sammie, in a wonderful two bedroom suite, complete with fireplace!

Now, this may not look like love, but Jazz adores Sammie, and they happily spent their evenings at the hotel playing and wrestling. Despite the violent appearance of these photos, no Dalmatians or Border Collies were harmed!! Rocky, who is over 13 years old, decided to leave the frolicking to the young kids and stayed on his cozy bed in the bedroom during the wrestling matches. Smart boy!

Snow Bunnies

The girls have really been having fun playing in the snow while we've been off for Christmas vacation. They're going to be disappointed when the visitors stop coming, we go back to work, and life gets back to normal around here after the holidays!