A cute picture FRIDAY!!!

First - a couple of cute pictures of the girls modeling their new collars! 

One of our agility friends makes them. I even have bracelets that match each of their collars made out of the same material and it uses a quick release. 

Awww - Alpha and Nari look so happy in their new collars. And then there's Starbuck - always looking out for where her next treat may come from :) 

Guess what? IT'S FRIDAY!! Woohooo!!! 

Oh crap.... :) This is the conversation my husband and I had at my agility lesson last night:
Me - Maybe I shouldn't wear shirts while running agility.
Husband - Maybe you shouldn't take jumps while running agility :)

But look at Starbuck - she still takes the jump but gives me this look like I'm totally crazy!!

If you want to see the video - it's at the end of our latest YouTube video:

Hope everyone has a wonderful weekend!! 

Happy Thursday + new video

Here's the latest video -

Only got two of Nari's Grand Prix runs from Cynosports recorded because I was so busy.

So.... things have been kind of quiet around here lately so I thought I would ask if anyone has any questions for us or topics they would like me to post? Or maybe more random cute pictures? What do you think?

Hope everyone is having a great week!

Pictures!

I just got some pictures back from Cynosports!! Here is my favorite one so far - Nari and I running in the Grand Prix Finals! 

I hope everyone had a great weekend!

2012 Cynosport World Games - dreams do come true!

Well, last time I posted about how much we had to overcome just to get to the Cynosport World Games this year. For those of you who don't know what Cynosports is - it's the National competition for USDAA - there were probably around 800 dogs (running in 6 rings) from all over the world! To say I was nervous would be an understatement. After not trialing since April I decide to fly all the way out to Denver, CO for the games and on top of that we had an amazing team. We teamed up with Elicia Calhoun, an internationally known trainer who travels around the world to compete and give seminars, with her BC BreeSea and her student, Bill Molloy and Cork. Both handlers and dogs are so amazingly talented and then there's me - taking lessons for 3 years, trialing for 2 years. I was terrified.

Back of our DAM team 'Who Corked BreeSea?' t-shirts. I am quite certain we had the best team 

shirts there. Bill designed the shirts and said my shirt would be free if we made it to the finals :) 

Oh yeah, and I was completely freaked out when I found out there was NO RING FENCING and the rings even shared sides!! Crap - my dogs have extremely high prey drives (there's a reason why they are sometimes referred to as 'mini huskies') and love to chase! So considering all we had been through this year, my goals were pretty low - make sure Nari stayed in the ring, try not to E, try not to embarrass ourselves and have FUN! And I was hoping that we'd do a little better than we did last year.

All I can say is that we totally exceeded my expectations.

A happy and very tired Nari after a long week of agility.

And here's how we did :)

Day 1 - We qualified for the Steeplechase and Grand Prix Semifinals!!

Day 2 - Team Snooker, 6th place?!?! I was completely shocked by this one, last time we did team snooker we completely bombed and ended up with a whopping 9 points. Not this time, 6th place with 54 points!

Day 3 - Our DAM team moved up to 17th place out of 170 teams!

Day 4 - We qualified to run in the Grand Prix FINALS and our team moved up to 14th place!!!

Day 5 - And I never thought this was possible - we got to run in BOTH the DAM Team Finals and the Grand Prix Finals!!! I think we ended up placing 10th in Grand Prix and 15th in DAM Team.

There we are after finishing our Grand Prix Finals run. I'm wearing my finalist polo they 

gave us to wear during the run. And there was even a production crew filming the finals runs 

along with commentary. What an amazing experience. 

Just look at that awesome DAM team - from left to right, Bill and Cork, 

me and Nari, Elicia and BreeSea. I was super excited that my shirt had our names on it! 

I'm working on a video, but it will be a while. The person who was recording our finals run forgot to open the lens cap so all I have is the audio :) but luckily someone recorded our run and put it on YouTube :) So here it is...

Still not running as well as I normally do - but considering I'm still injured and had to deal with the change in altitude and being completely nervous (bleachers full of people, tons of people watching the live streaming video, commentators, multiple professional video cameras...), I think we did pretty well! And most importantly of all - Nari had so much fun. That was really my goal all along, for Nari to be happy. 

We were supposed to fly back home on Sunday but had to change everything at the last minute because we MADE THE FINALS and had to stay an extra day!! WOOHOOO!!!

Hope everyone is well - and don't forget to HUG YOUR DOGS :)

Working hard for a dream...

I think I have mentioned this before - but I have been in quite a slump for a while. It started with Nari getting injured August 2011 at the Chicago Regionals. Then I pulled my hamstring which led to plantar fasciitis. The plantar fasciitis turned into posterior tibial tendonitis. I was told by the first specialist that he didn't know what to do so sent me to another specialist. He suspected that I would need ankle reconstruction surgery, putting my out for 18 months. To say I was devastated would be an understatement. Second specialist told me I didn't need surgery... yet... but had to stop everything immediately. So basically I've been out injured for nearly a year and have been in and out of PT since December 2011. You know it's bad when you are in every single picture of your sports therapy's FaceBook page...

I had no intentions of going to the Cynosport World Games (USDAA Nationals) this year. But I decided back in August that I was tired of being pissed off and angry at being injured so I decided the hell with it - I'm going to sign up and I'm going to be ready in September for it. So - I told my sports therapist my plan. He said he couldn't guarantee anything but he would try. You know what happens when you fast track sports therapy? It hurts like HELL. I mean it hurts enough to make those big muscle guys cry. In fact, I was in PT with an MMA fighter. Seriously, it is painful. Let's just say by now the therapist is quite impressed with my pain tolerance.

After I put my mind to I had to work hard with my agility trainer, Ace, to get my dogs in shape. We hadn't even run a full course in months... so my goal for Nationals was just to have fun. At first I had to be creative in finding ways to train my dogs without being able to run.

All I can say is that Ace is simply amazing. I cannot tell how lucky I am to have found him. Not only is he an awesome agility trainer, he cares so much about the dogs and insuring that they are having fun. And he has been so supportive of me in everything that I do. He even took me out to brunch after our lessons to cheer me up.

Here is a little video of some of our hard work getting ready for Nationals - we only had about 3 weeks to cram in months of training....



In a couple of days I'll post how Nationals went...