Trixi stars in educational video

We all knew Trixi was talented in flyball, agility, snake killing and tree climbing. She now stars in an educational video. Check out "How to Clean Your Comforter" on YouTube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nszsKJi-A4

Posted by her manager,
Kim

Wikazri Practice

On the rare occasion when the Texas weather is tolerable, we'll hold practices outside at Wikazri field in South Austin. Our normal flyball haunt, Austin Canine Central, was booked for a T-Touch seminar today. So, some of us flyball addicts packed up our dogs and equipment, and headed to practice in Kim's backyard (literally).

Practices at Wikazri tend to be more laid-back than those at ACC. Perhaps it's the nice weather that gets to us and we often find ourselves eating peanut brittle and drinking cucumber water while the dogs play amongst themselves.

When we first arrive at Wikazri, there is usually the initial chase game.

Neener, neener, you'll never catch meeeeeeee!

Then there are those like Marz, who entertain themselves.

Must fit in mouth.

All the while the chase game continues . . .

Ha ha! I zig and zag like the wind. You'll never catch meeeeeee!!!

Eventually we get on to actual flyball training.






Sometimes the little ones make a break for it . . .

Muwhahahaha. I SAID you'll NEVER catch meeeee!

Then it's time to cool off in the pool . . . that is if someone else is not already hogging the water.



And then another game of chase and fetch.

I bite bottoms.

What better way to end the post than with a picture of a cute puppy?

Introducing FALCON

Thanks to some quick thinking by Shah, our endless search for Benjamin's border collie puppy is now over. We introduce you to FALCON, our two month old smooth coat B/W from a long line of working BC's. She's a bundle of energy with lots of tug drive. Falcon definitely has the BC herding instinct and we have the holey pants and ankles to prove it.

Pogo Takes Special Award from national Championships

NADAC contacted me last week to let me know that Pogo was awarded the Highest Scoring Versatility Dog with Zero Course Faults at the NADAC Championships in Tennessee. They didn’t do the calculations until after they got back into the office and then just sent me the award but they sent it to the wrong address so I’m finding out about it late.
Versatility was the designation they used for the dog competing in all classes at the Elite level.
I’m really proud of the little guy. The award came in the mail yesterday.
Kim

Pogo Earns NATCH 5 & Wins the Red Hot Summer Challenge

Last Saturday, at the New Hope Agility Trial, Pogo earned his NATCH 5 award. A NATCH stands for NADAC Agility Trial Champion and requires 490 points at the Elite (most advanced) level. Pogo just earned his 5th one! (Yes, that's 2,450 Elite points) Rumor has it that he is the first dog in Texas to have earned that many NATCHs.

Mimosas were injoyed by all, except for Pogo, who had many sticks of cheese covered with peanut butter.

Then Sunday morning, they gave out the awards for the Red Hot Summer Challenge and low and behold, Pogo won the 20" division. They gave us a wonderful embroideried bag.

We were riding high on the hog! Check out the picture of our crating area.

A Great Weekend of Flyball Indeed!

Dogz Rule! had a great weekend of flyball in Huntsville. We're all home and boy, are we pooped!

4Dogz held onto a strong second place in their division with some really tight runs, even sweeping one of Top Dog Racer's teams at the end of the day on Sunday in three clean heats. We had 10 exciting runs in the 17's!

After a scary first race where they broke out TWICE, Hoodz swept their division (they gave up a few heats but no races except for that first one all weekend) and took first place. No doubt about it, we stomped the competition into submission.

Rumz was in an Open division with a large spread in seed times. With two seconds between the first seeded team and their own seed, it would have been difficult to win on time, so our principal goal was to run clean (and thus win on consistency), give the six dogs as much mat time as possible, and have a good time. By forcing the other teams to fight for their wins and taking heats here and there in every race, we mixed up the placement order by the end of the weekend. It's great to be a spoiler!

Here are some weekend highlights:

• Harry got his ONYX title with 21 points to spare (more on the circusk9 blog).

• Ryp and Sisko got their FDCH-Gold titles.

• Lauren punched Kim in the mouth. I'll let one of them provide gory details.
  

• Marz ran a personal best of 3.88 seconds. I was honored to handle him all weekend.

• Bad dog Velvet ran away and half a dozen DR! people mobilized to look for her. She was found; it probably took longer to find all of the DR! people and get them back to the arena.

• Kim wants to be The Most Interesting Woman in the World.
  

• Duncan raced all weekend (he ran in 7 of Rumz' 8 races), had some great saves from box bobbles, looked very hard at a JRT in the other lane, and still decided to return to Jenn. We won't be able to call him a green dog for much longer!
  

• Ben box-loaded for Rumz all weekend. I think he now better understands one of the basic box-loader tenets: after the fourth dog comes through, always reload the box with a ball, any ball.

• Ivy is looking fantastic, completing several full runs in her warm up slot with Hoodz.

• Thirteen-year-old Wich ran two error-free races, both of which included four heats, with beautiful four-foot box turns. He was so excited to be racing with his buddies. Old Dogz Rule!
  

• Our prez Karl is being fast-tracked for NAFA judge certification and it seemed like he was in the ring all weekend in his black-and-white stripes. He judged quite a few DR! races and has to be commended for his professionalism and calmness. Of course, he was also tapped to judge Human Flyball on Sunday. Karl, does that count towards the certification?

• Hoodz was undefeated all weekend, except for the first race where we broke out twice, beating the other team on time although NAFA didn't quite see it that way.
  

Dogz Rule! Off To Huntsville

The club is heading off to Huntsville, Texas, for a great weekend of flyball hosted by our good buddies Texas Heat. They are trying out a new facility there and we are all excited about checking it out.

As usual, most of us are staying at the always-pet-friendly La Quinta!

Allow me to share a personal La Quinta story with you. I drove to Utah this past December with three of my dogs to spend the Christmas holiday with my good friend Gosia. The weather was threatening to become horrific--giant snow storm on its way down from the northwest. I was racing west and north as fast as I could. On our second day, I made it from Amarillo to Moab but found I just couldn't drive any farther. It was December 23 and I was worried about getting a room. Any room. As I was cruising down the main drag in Moab, I saw the familiar LQ sign. I parked, went in, and found they had rooms available! The woman at the desk was welcoming and friendly, and pulled the latest weather reports off the internet after she checked me in. The hotel had a large, clean, fenced potty area out back (with a stocked potty bag dispenser and a large trash can nearby) where the dogs could stretch their legs. As usual for LQ, the room was clean and quiet. We woke the next morning at 5am to heavily falling snow, but that's a whole 'nother story!

My red Dodge rental in the Moab LQ parking lot, December 24, 2008.

Anyway, we are certainly not expecting snow this weekend in Huntsville.

DR! is taking three teams to this small tournament. Stay tuned for results!

Trixi, Warrior Princess

Trophies.

I'm posting this for Trixi, our very own Warrior Princess. Who could believe that tiny little dog could kill an adult coral snake (scary, poisonous, and most certainly pissed) and what may be a juvenile rat snake (not poisonous but has a nasty bite and also most certainly pissed)? In the same morning! Whew! I guess that silver tooth has given her super snake-killing powers.

The postscript to this event is that I convinced Kim to go back out to the field, brush the ants off the carcasses, bag them up, and stash them in her freezer! Ew, ew, and ew. I am still surprised she went along with this.

I have a professor friend at UT Austin, Chris Bell, a vertebrate paleontologist, who studies living species of snakes and lizards in order to better understand fossil species. He is particularly excited about getting his hands on the coral snake, head and guts intact, because he can study skull morphology (important in identifying snakes in the fossil record) as well as what it ate (gives us an idea of the kinds of environments that snakes live in).

Sometime in the next few days, I expect that Kim and Chris will meet up in some hot parking lot of some fast food joint somewhere in Austin and transfer the precious goods from her car to his!

Not only did Trixi make the field safer for all of us and our dogs, she's made a valuable contribution to science!

Just For Fun

A little video of Ryp and Remix from January (? I think?). We were having fun goofing off during a lighthearted training session.

What cuteness!

--La

Border Collies are Crazy aka the Wiggley Giggley Incident

Usually when I clean out the dog room closet I'll find various toys buried (hidden) under random things. I tend to forget why I have them there in the first place. After bringing them out . . . I remember why.

The wiggley giggley is one of those items.

Marz is a pervert - he violated that poor bowser bed.

--La

I found the blog! FUN TIMES!
Amy Shan

Talk about a Dog in Da Hood!

Trixi's new tooth. No diamonds, but sparkling silver.

DR Photo Collection

Make a Smilebox slideshow

Make a Smilebox slideshow

Brand New Flyball Venue

DogzRule! will be introducing a new Flyball venue for Central Texas at our tournament in November. The new venue is the Bell Country Expo Center Assembly Hall in Belton, Texas. This new venue features plenty of paved parking, potty spots for dogz, large clean restrooms for humans and... best of all... freezing cold air conditioning.

Since the venue sits right on I-35, the Flyball world will be visible to thousands of drivers every day on the bright, new color marquis.

The DogzRule! engineering team is working on different layouts to bring two ring tournaments back to Central Texas.

The staff at the Expo Center had never heard of flyball and they all seem very excited about seeing their first tournament.

Here's hoping for a long, and fruitful relationship between NAFA Region 5 Flyball and the Bell County Expo Center.

Welcome Amy and David to the addiction of flyball

At Reliant last week, Amy ran Carrera in her first flyball tournament and they did great. I don't think there was one flag on Carrera! Welcome to our addiction!

Reliant 2009

Dogz Rule! as usual brought all we had to Reliant.

We fielded four teams, one on Friday designed just for two of our green dogs, and three teams on Saturday and Sunday.

Four of our dogs picked up new titles! Many congratulations to

Carrera, FD, FDX
Duncan FDCh
Hawkeye FMX
Rudie FMX

Way to go, everyone! It takes a village to run a flyball team.

Soon-To-Be New Judge for NAFA Region 5

Dogz Rule! is super proud of Karl who has been going through the many required training hoops to become an official NAFA judge. He should be a provisional judge by the time our own tournament in November rolls around.

Here's a picture of Karl doing his thing in the ring at Reliant, with Lawrence back at the score table keeping an eagle eye on things.


When Kim and I were line judging and Karl was there in the middle of the ring, I leaned over to her and said, "Look! Our little boy is all growed up!" He looks so, well, so official out there with his black and white referee shirt and whistle.

Here's Karl, steady as he can be amidst the usual chaos that is a typical flyball ring.


Karl, you bring honor and lots of great attention to Dogz Rule! and we all thank you for the time and money you are putting into this effort. You da man!