Vader VISITS The 2014 Dog Agility World Championships in Morgan Hill

The 2014 Dog Agility World Championships are going on in Morgan Hill, CA this week, and wrapping up this Sunday, 10-19-14.  With close to 1,000 dogs from 10 different countries competing to become the Grand Prix of Dog Agility World Champion, competing for more than $10,000 in prize money in the Dog Agility Steeplechase called the USDAA 2014 CynoSport., it is a huge event. I have never seen so many EZ-Ups, campers and what not, all in one place. It's an incredible sight to see.

To be clear, Vader IS NOT COMPETING in this event, we were just visiting the event site because outside of the competition field there were things like Splash Dogs, a great lure course, some barn hunting and a few pet-related vendors. I was sort of surprised how few vendors were at the event.

We decided to partake in the lure course with Vader and Lark and Vader tackled the Splash Dogs pool. 

Well, tackled might be a strong word.

The Lure Course Experience:

The lure course was fun. We've previously tackled straight line and square lure courses, but this one had all kinds of twists, turns and hurdles. Wait... hurdles? Yep, hurdles or mild obstacles.

Of course when we tackled the lure course, the operator did not reset the timer, but instead, left it running for all three runs between Vader and Lark. So I timed the video runs manually and for Vader I came up with 15.5 and 12.7 second runs. I, um, don't have a time for Lark and you'll see why in the third video.

BTW, paying to run the lure course benefited " "Lure-For-the-Cure" presented by the National Canine Cancer Foundation (NCCF)"

Here are Vader's two lure course runs:

Run #1



Run #2


And here's Lark's first time in a lure course:


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The Dock Diving Experience

As far as the seasoned dock jumper, Vader, taking his shot at the Splash Dogs dock diving pool, well, Vader completely surprised me. (The above image is from a previous jump session months ago)

So...

We strode up to the dock diving ramp, which oddly, was sloped downward rather than flat like the dock we're accustomed to, and we went through our pre-jump routine. Then I called him to me to jump for the borrowed "woobie" and "bam!," Vader slid to a stop and acted like he never jumped off a dock before in his life.  I looked at him and thought to myself, "Seriously???" 

Then the dock operator asked if he ever jumped before and the good folks in the line were giving us "tips" on how to get my dog off the dock. All the while, Vader is hanging off the end of the dock and barking at the "woobie" I had tossed into the water.

Sigh.

Vader did take one sort of jump off the dock and he had his fun, but dang, what a surprise! 

Still, we all had fun, even if there were no disc events.

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