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!
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