We've been to the last two PHADD Sat practices and this last Sat we attended Wags for Wishes, held in Glendale, AZ. There were a few different disc dog groups there and some of dogs were doing some pretty amazing tricks. There were three novice competitions that everyone could enter, freestyle (where you see all the cool tricks, like dogs vaulting off of the handler's back and catching the disc), distance and accurancy, and time trials. Most of our group entered the distance and accuracy, which basically you got points by throwing the frisbee and having your dog catch it as many times as you could in one minute. It was $10 to enter and you got two trys. About half of the dogs in our group participated, including Murphy. We decided that Wally should be the one to compete, since he's the better thrower and I had stage fright, lol. His first round went pretty good, he caught two throws.
Waiting for the time to start...
The second round started off even better, he was catching every throw, including a couple that got bounced off his paw and still caught it!
Then with 30 seconds still to go in the 2nd round, after an impressive catch followed by much applause, he stopped in the middle of the course, spun around a few times, and relieved himself, right in front of the crowd... and I'm not talking about no.1... (no I didn't get a pic of it, I was laughing way too hard) I guess when you gotta go, you gotta go, haha!!! In the end, we placed second to last within our group, but I'm pretty sure he won best entertainment value, judging by the roars of laughter from the audience. What a dog...He managed to redeem himself in other events though. We had him tested for natural herding ability, and not only did he pass, but the tester said he got an A+!! It was pretty cool to see his instinct kick in, once we got into the pen and I let him off the leash, it seemed like he immediately knew what to do. I half expected him to run away scared from the sheep, haha. But she said you couldn't ask for a better dog to start with, so that might be something we'll try to get him into also.
Kinda hard to see him in this pic, he's in between the black and brown sheep..
Rounding up one that broke away from the herd...
There was also a lure course set up, which was a sort of narrow, basic agility course with this squirrel tail that was run on a fishing wire track. Murphy went CRAZY while we were waiting in line for our turn once he saw the other dogs chasing it. If you've seen how excited he gets about the dot, just imagine him even more pyshco... I don't have any pictures of that b/c my camera battery died :(
Anyway, we had a really fun day and look forward to the next dog event, there a couple coming up in the next few months.
Anyway, we had a really fun day and look forward to the next dog event, there a couple coming up in the next few months.
