Friday, August 15, 2014

Vader's New Friends At Niles


Today Vader went swimming at Niles, in Fremont.  We met Lucy, a burly and fun black lab. We also made a new friend in Piper, a fellow herder breed! :)

We talked to Piper's dad and learned that Piper just might like dock diving and from the sounds of things, could very well be a fellow disc dog too! Yay.

So Bruce told Piper's dad about all the different fun places and things that might come with playing with a disc dog.

We told them about Doggone Dirty Dock Diving and what a fun place that is.

We told them about our disc dog club, Disc Dogs of the Golden Gate.

And we told him about places to get dog discs from, like Hero Disc USA. Dog discs are a softer type of disc with thinner lips so dogs can get their teeth around the edge.

Discs: These are the more common kinds of discs fellow competitors use, (the following images are links to Hero Disc USA's Amazon offerings.), these discs are misprints of Hero Air 235s, the most commonly used disc in the world of disc dog competitions.


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But if your dog is a heavy biter, like Vader, where he can destroy a disc in a week or so, we've found these Super Aero's survive Vader's power jaws much better and still fly almost as, if not better than (depending on the thrower) the other disc.


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The above discs are "blems" or "misprints," which are offered at a steep discount versus the perfect discs they sell. Also, when ordering blems, you don't a choice in color. You get what you get.

If you're curious about our journey to being Freestyling Disc Dog team, you can check out the featured article over on Bay Woof, that came out this month!

Here's pics from today's fun at Niles... it's always awesome to meet great people, dogs, oh, and turtles too.


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Monday, August 4, 2014

Update from San Ramon DDotGG Event

Update from Disc Dogs of the Golden Gate Aug 3rd event!

It would seem that even though we were concerned for Vader's well being and recovering from his injury, he seems to have no ill effects (that we can see immediately) from competing yesterday.

We only competed in the Pro (Toss and Catch) Division and we were able to do so as two teams, Bruce and Vader, and Amy and Vader.

Despite taking a few weeks off, Vader did spectacularly, in combination with my practicing like a mad dog over the last few weeks and Amy just getting better and better as the days go on.

In our division Vader and I scored a 25-point day after two rounds of 11 and 14 points. That's a pretty big scoring day for our efforts.

2nd place had 18 points and Amy and Vader came in third with 13 points for the day.

All in all, it was a fun day, with no discernible limping afterwards from Vader. We're still keeping a close eye on him and will have some moderate practices, being as how we're headed to Sonoma this Sunday for a demonstration at another baseball game.


To be honest, I enjoyed competing in the Pro division.  When Vader and I broke out of the Novice division last year we only competed once in the Pro division and then we started doing the Open division (freestyle and T&C).  And so just having two rounds of Toss and Catch was rather fun and I think I may stay in the Pro division for a few more events before getting back into the world of the Open division.  We'll see. But just in case, I guess notice has been served!  -Bruce