SuperDogs - Edmonton Boat and Sportsmen's Show

 

The girls and I were invited out to perform with the SuperDogs, this time at the Edmonton Boat and Sportsmen's Show. It was a short, action packed couple of days, with 3 shows per day for 4 days.

I was really pleased with the girls. It was Kenna's debut (last time in Prince Albert she was just 5 months old and only did Pat'n'Chat) and she rocked it, performing in puissance, disc freestyle, weaves, relays, and she did some basket deliveries. Kili was also a good girl and added basket delivery to her repetoire.

The girls also did tandem weaves for the first time. Actually, I was surprised how easy it was for us, as I've watched a number of teams in past years work on their tandem weaves with lots of speed bumps along the way. Frequently, one dog will be very steady and know their job and the other dog (usually the younger or less experienced) struggles with over arousal/excitement leading to either popping poles or just running right past the entry and barking at the other dog who is weaving. Teams usually experiment with what the best order of dogs is. I've also seen teams struggle with the second dog popping the last couple of poles because the first dog is already finished. We didn't have any of these issues which was great. I experimented once or twice in the beginning with the order, originally thinking it would be best to put Kenna first since she is the faster weaver, and I thought if she couldn't see Kili she would be more likely to weave nicely, versus if she was behind she might get overexcited and pop out. As it turned out, for whatever reason they seemed to work better with Kili in front, and Kenna would actually modulate her speed as needed... if she caught up to Kili she would stutter step to let her get ahead a bit and continue without missing a pole. Our one hurdle was getting both girls around the barrel without them nipping at each other or trying to play, but even that worked itself out with a few practices.

Kili struggled in our very first show 2 years ago with soreness after puissance, and so I have been reluctant to let her jump as high as she can during shows. Luckily, a lot of the back issues she had when she was younger have become a non-issue in the past 2 years, so Kili was able to jump a personal best of 8 bars (with enough space that I'm pretty sure she would have cleared 9 if it had been there). Kenna was a superstar. This was her first time seeing a high jump, and she worked from jumping 5, 6, and 7 on the first day, to jumping 7, 8, 9.

The girls were pretty exhausted by the end. It's a lot of work for just 2 dogs (better than when I just had 1 though!). Until next time, these SuperDogs are back to their usual activity... agility! Stay tuned for lots of upcoming trials!

Superdogs at the Prince Albert Exhibition

Kili, Kenna and I spent 5 days playing with the SuperDogs this summer at the Prince Albert Exhibition, in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan. We ended up being on the road for a total of 10 days though as we piggybacked with a long weekend agility trial in Calgary. That's a long time to be on the road doing high impact dog sports, and to top it off it was very hot for most of that time. The girls were troopers and I was happy with how Kili performed even towards the end when I could tell she was hot and tired.

Kili added 3 new events to her skills list - weaves, mats, and relays. I knew she could do mats and weaves, but I was extremely excited that she was able to run relays. It was helpful because this was a small show with only a cast of 6, so it was ideal if everyone had a relay dog because with 3 races we all had to run a dog. Depending on what events we ran in a particular show, I did sometimes run someone else's dog in relay, but it was nice to have Kili as an option. We chose her matches carefully, choosing dogs that wouldn't mind if she crossed lanes and chased, but we only had it happen twice at the beginning of the week and after that she was great. I was really happy that she was able to focus on me instead of the other dog running.

I do need to get another set of weave poles for at home though. Kili has become a pretty proficient weaver, but it was obvious that she was confused by the sheer number of weave poles in SuperDogs. In agility the dogs weave 12 poles. In SuperDogs we do 24 (we ended up having to go down to 18 after the first day because someone stole some of our poles overnight) back to back for a total of 48. On the way down Kili would weave perfectly, on the way back she tended to want to skip the poles. You could almost see her thinking "what the hell? why are there so many?" In her defense, for 50 weeks of the year there are 12 weave poles, and then for 1-2 weeks there are suddenly 48. So I will buy another set for home and get her used to weaving more than 12 in a row periodically.

Of course Kili played disc as well. She's good at it, she has some big freestyle tricks, and of course she's an unusual disc breed so that's quite the draw. We ran both long throw events and freestyle.

It was quite a small cast and crew so it was all hands on deck. Only having 1 dog is a bit tough in SuperDogs. Your dog ends up having to run a lot of events, but they also like to have variety and not see the same dog too much throughout the entire show. Most people have at least 2 performing dogs. Since I only have Kili right now I ended up getting to run other peoples' dogs in events when needed. I got to play with a sport mix (border collie/jack russell), a fluffy mixed breed, a boxer, and a chihuahua.

The chihuahua, Taco, belonged to my roommate and we had a special relationship. He is apparently not overly social and doesn't let people he doesn't know touch him or pick him up. From the get-go though he kept hopping the baby gate between our halves of the hotel room, and so the first morning I reached over (not knowing he doesn't like to be picked up) and picked him up to put him back on his side of the room. My roommate was literally shocked that I didn't get bit. From then on though, he would jump over to my side of the room ALL the time, he even slept with me several nights. He was my special little buddy and I ran him in relays and did a little freestyle routine with him. Maybe next time I should get a chihuahua? ;)

Kenna came along for the experience, and to be my Pat 'n' Chat dog. Kili does not like to be surrounded, especially by children, and I do not put my dogs in situations they are uncomfortable with. While Kili was relaxing after the show, little Kenna got to come out and enjoy some attention which she reveled in (she also loved the treats that go with it!).

Shout Out - SuperDog Style!

Kili recently got a shout out on Facebook on her recent SGDC title from her SuperDogs family, after I discovered that she is the first greyhound to ever achieve this title. Thanks for the love guys! <3

Kili and the SuperDogs

Kili just completed her first event with the SuperDogs in July. We did a 10 days stint at Edmonton's K-Days. Old man Summit got to come along and play a bit too!

It was definitely an interesting experience, and also an exhausting one. The cast and crew put on 3 shows a day at 2, 5 and 8 PM. It was long days for the dogs, and for the humans too! I was very pleased with how well she handled the new equipment, and also how she handled all the distractions. It would be unreasonable to expect her to not be distracted at all, but I found that it was quite manageable. She noticed the crowd the most during frisbee events where she would take a moment to look around after catching the disc instead of running straight back to me, but she hardly seemed to notice during agility events.

Kili in Close Encounters

Kili taking the long jump in Star Wars

Doing such a long stint I did uncover a few things that are good to know going forward, that I hadn't really considered going into this. The first is that we need a conditioning schedule leading into these shows. We don't routinely train this hard, this many days in a row, so it's helpful to work up to this level of activity. Of course, it would also help if I had another performance dog so they could each get some time off every few days... I suppose it's time to start thinking about another puppy! ;) The other thing I hadn't considered was that Kili isn't used to running on carpet every day, and so we are now working on tolerating Vetrap on our feet for future events.

Returning with the disc. Learning to wear Vetrap!

Back vault during Stunt Dogs

Kili participated in a couple of events. We had an event that we called Star Wars which was basically an agility challenge. This was a great event because there is only one dog on the floor the entire time. We also participated in an event we called Close Encounters which was a longest frisbee toss. There is only one dog loose at a time, but all the dogs in the event are present on the floor. I was super proud that Kili didn't visit another dog at any point when we did this event, though she would get really excited watching the other dogs chasing their discs. In the first few days we also did an event called Stunt Dogs where we showed off some of our freestyle disc moves, but we stopped doing this event later in the show as disc is hard on Kili physically and I wanted to make sure she didn't get hurt with all the extra work she was doing in other events. The last event we did was puissance - high jump. I am curious to see how high Kili can jump, but didn't want to push it too much since this was only her first time out. The highest she jumped in the shows was 7 bars, and in practice she was clearing 8 handily. The top of the jump is 9 bars, and then there's an extension that we can add to take it up to a total of 12 bars. I think 9 is more than reasonable in future, but I don't think I will jump her much higher than that.

Puissance - 4 bars, the lowest height Kili jumped in the show

Summit also came along every day and would go out for the sweet "love your dog" opening (Kili's ability to stay still is questionable) and also for Pat'n'Chat after the show. He really loved getting to go out and would get super bouncy. I just love my old boy!

Summit and I walking down the hallway to the stage entrance.

Summit and I having some quiet time on stage during opening.

Summit loves Pat'n'Chat!

So many treats!

Here's a video compilation of Kili's performances:

Meet the newest member of the PC SuperDogs!

*Drum Roll*

Kili has been invited to perform with the President's Choice SuperDogs at K-Days in Edmonton this summer! K-Days is a huge exhibition/fair that happens every year in the city for 2 weeks. To say I'm excited is a bit of an under-exaggeration! I LOVED going to the SuperDogs shows as a kid... I never imagined I'd be IN the show!

Kili and I will be "apprenticing" for the first 3 days to see how things work, get her used to the equipment that's used, and learn the games in the show. After that they will start to put her into parts of the show that they think she is able to handle and we'll progress from there. I'm interested to see how she does as she's never experienced anything like a SuperDogs show! There's loud music and lights, a huge audience clapping and cheering, and lots of other dogs. Now you know what the relay race practice is for!

Check out the K-Days website to see Kili's special, personal shout out!

SuperDogs at K-Days