July 24, 2011

Dazzle's B-day tribute, a bit early

I just created this little video of photos/video clips from the past year and I love it so much I couldn't wait to post it :-)  So even though Dazle's birthday is on the 31st, here is the tribute to a wonderful year gone by (age 2 to age 3).  Here's hoping for MANY more years together!

VIDEO: Tribute 2 years old to 3 years old
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDpDZoj6lGg

July 18, 2011

Forgot some photos

Here are a few more photos that I took at camp.

On the last day of camp, Dazzle got a massage. He REALLY enjoyed the rub down and went to sleep while she was working on him.

I laughed when I came into the room and saw that he had very carefully used the floor rug to "hide" his food from the other dogs at camp. I think he did a pretty good job!

Here is what he had covered. He came over to check to see if it was still there after I uncovered it

Wet and happy dog

Portrait- taken during the Directional Control practice

Another portrait, taken on the last day

Camp 2 was lots of fun!

Dazzle had a great time at Dog Scout camp even though I was working.

He didn't seem to mind the sand one bit! 
I tried not to throw the ball into the sand, but it's kind of hard to avoid :-)
 We participated in the mini "greeting" hike on day 1



But most of his exercise was from fetching his ball out of the lake, over and over and over again :-)
I relaxed in a chair in the shade while he got his workout in the water to keep him cool. God bless whomever invented the Chuck-it toy!
 Water entry:

We did find some bits of free time to work on badges.  He got the Frisbee badge, Naked Dog Obedience badge (multiple behaviors performed in a row at a distance from the handler) and also the Directional Control Level 2 badge shown below.

VIDEO: Directional Control 2:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9y5rMvXhAi8


I celebrated my birthday at camp- A great place to be! Lonnie makes sure the German Chocolate Cake is served on my birthday :-)

Dazzle got to run the Agilure course again just for fun and once again had the fastest time of all the (16) dogs (under 8 sec.) and was 1/2 a sec. faster than Cadence the BC that had the next fastest time.

He also played the "Devil Duck" game. 

The idea is for the dog to get the most ducks out of the hoop and close enough to the handler for the handler to get the duck (within the time limit). But if they pick up one of the red ducks, the time stops. If they select the black duck, it counts as 2 ducks. Staff had 2 red ducks in the ring and the campers only had 1. There was a tie for second place and in the "duck-off" Dazzle got 9 ducks! So he got second place in the staff category.



One of the crafts was making "Survival Bracelets" out of paracord. Not sure who's bracelet this was, but mine is just solid black.  I made a solid blue one at camp 1.

This baby blue tailed skink had hitchhiked a ride on Ann's back.  When I got him off of her, he spent several minutes riding around in my hands being shown to anyone that wanted to see it.  Then I let it go in the woods.

Dazzle also got a bit further in his Treibball practice during the Treibball class

He was able to nose the ball all the way to me from about 15' away

Charlie Duman, a dog belonging to a staff member, started working on Treibball during the June camp and then was the very first dog to earn the level 1 badge at this camp, just 1 month later!

The full moon was amazingly bright (enough to cast shadows)!  The number of stars visible at camp in the north woods of Michigan is just mind-boggling. This is a photo of the moon!
As usual, it was "the best camp ever!"  Great people, great dogs, wonderful and supportive atmosphere, several life changing "Ah ha!" moments for many of the attendees and lots of new friends made.

After camp, we had another IMPROV trial.  Dazzle got 3rd place, only 1 point shy of the 2nd place dog!  I was very proud of his performance, but surprized he had trouble with the retrieve objects.  No photos or video this time.

July 09, 2011

Laughing dog

AAAAH HA HA HA HA HA HA!


Dazzle was panting hard after a play session in the heat and I was playing around with camera angles.  For the first photo above, I had him looking at my hand that was held high.  I expected to get some good photos of "all teeth", but had to laugh when I saw that they ended up looking like he was laughing.