The United States Dog Agility Association (USDAA) had this event last year in Ohio and for 2017 they expanded it to three (east, west, central). We had so much fun at the trial doing agility, watching agility, rally, swimming – we had to come back even though this year it Read more…
The American Kennel Club (AKC) has been creating more new programs over the last few years. Part of this is to provide opportunities for people with varied interests and dogs with different strengths. (And part of it is suspected to be for financial reasons…) One of these new programs is Read more…
Way back in 2001 when Blaze was a puppy, I did a lot of reading online about dogs and training – very quickly I learned about dog sports/activities – including competition obedience. For many reasons (dog health! behavior challenges! rules at the time prohibiting mixed breed dogs!) I just wasn’t Read more…
Good news – I’ve see more opportunities for online entries. Including an entry that I sent last week – I entered the day before closing and a paper entry would have not arrived on time. Bad news – almost every one of these options (AKC obedience/rally, UKI agility, breed Read more…
Griffin does not do well with nose-related-activities. It’s been very hard to train him those kinds of tasks and it’s one of the reasons our obedience trials are on hold. We’re part of a group that holds nosework trials through the UKC program. There are 5 (maybe more?) levels of Read more…
Last fall we attempted a retriever certificate test. We didn’t pass -but it really truly seemed like bad luck vs a specific training challenge. He did really well despite having very little training for that type of event and it seemed like it might be realistic to do AKC style Read more…
The first time we went to Minnesota was in 2014 – with just Griffin and Blaze. Now I’ve made the trip many times, with many different dogs. The initial trip was very stressful – I was worried about getting there in time for our appointments and getting back in time Read more…
On Monday we had one of our many trips to visit the rehab vet that keeps Griffin and Viktor as well as possible after past health challenges. For both of the dogs it was a recheck and hoping that nothing new would be discovered. We now have a board certified Read more…
One of our activities last weekend was judging a rally trial in MN for the Minnesota Mixed Breed Club. This club is great- they hold different kinds of trials and events open to all dogs. This may seem unusual for people who are newer to dog activities – but many Read more…
On Friday we drove up to Minnesota for an action packed 3 days; participate in a trial, judge a rally obedience trial, go to the vet specialist, and visit with dog friends. Yesterday we got to do two runs in CDSP obedience first thing in the morning before I judged. Read more…