Breeze NA NAJ or Bendy Breeze

Breeze earned her NA and NAJ titles at the agility trials in Livermore Ca Aug 3 and 4th. She is fast and fun to handle. I have learned a lot of handling from her mother Whisper but I also made many mistakes. I hope to improve my handling with Breeze. Two mistakes that plagued Whisper and I throughout her career was holding contacts and lead outs from the table.

By the time I realized I had a problem it was almost too late to fix them. With Breeze I vowed to teach her early on what I wanted in a trial.

In her second and third Novice Standard videos you will notice I am trying to leave her on the table and lead out. I am nervous to go very far, when dogs are in a trial their adrenaline is high and they are almost hyper responsive. At least at the Novice level you can make two mistakes and still qualify. Her contacts have been excellent until the last contact of the third Standard run-the dog walk. She jumps off to follow me to the tunnel. Allowing her to do this would lead to earlier and earlier leaving  or to jump the contact zone entirely which is what happened with Whisper. So instead of making a big deal of the mistake , a simple Uh Oh!! and stop running for a second or two will hopefully correct the problem.








Now on to Open which allows only one mistake per run!

Western Sighthound Combined Greyhound Specialty

The Western Sighthound Combined Specialty in Lompoc is a yearly event. The Greyhound Club of America has the Western Greyhound Specialty at this site. On Friday July 27 2013 we had our conformation and obedience specialty.

Best of Breed was GCH Aroi Aryal Remarkable aka "Brego"and his owner Donna Arcaro.  A big congratulations to both of them. Brego has long been a favorite of mine so much so that he is the father of the Whisper puppies.

In obedience Echo did super-her first time in the Open A ring and she went High In Trial with a 196. This was especially suprising since she had been in bandages with a lacerated toe, then a broken tail, then another lacerated toe. She had been in bandages for at least 6 weeks before the specialty, hence minimal to no practice. Stitches came out and bandage off 4 days before the specialty. We quickly had to practice our teamwork.

Breeze also had her first attempt at Rally. In obedience I always start my dogs off with Rally. It is much easier and more interactive than regular obedience. She also did a great job earning her first Rally Novice leg with a perfect score of 100.

Ch Aragon Full Moon Rising JC

Riser is  now 2 years old and a new Champion and has his JC. But he is definitely still a PUPPY. His  two main pastimes are sleeping and running through the backyard corn and through the peach tree branches.  Of course, Bryn is right behind him!!!!

Bryn and Riser ran a fun lure course of about 200 yds at the Ferndale show and I am still hearing about the greyhounds that ran that night. People with other breeds don’t get the opportunity to see them run as nature intended.

He gets a lot of attention at the shows due to his red brindle coloring and very glossy coat and, of course, his height. He is quite tall and so his other name is “legs”.

As for the sleeping, he waits patiently until I am in bed and then proceeds to bring his night time toy to bed and lays his head on my shoulder and goes to sleep. Fortunately, when he gets hot, he  moves to the foot of the bed.  What a relief !!

He is the most loving greyhound of all my greys.  He seems to think it is his job to keep everyone in shape. That certainly includes me.

We love him and thank Helen and Whisper and Brego for the opportunity to enjoy him

Tom and Marie

Breeze's Agility Debut

Last weekend was a bittersweet weekend. Sad because it was to be Whisper return to agility but health issues dictated otherwise and she is retired. When I am able I will post about it. Happy because Breeze had so much fun and did so well.

She runs much like her mother responsive, fast, furious and incredibly fun to watch. In this photo of the weavepoles taken by Costa Colbert she has no feet on the ground. She charges through weavepoles although gettting entrances is dicey at this point. Once in she powers through them.
Her first run ever in competition was the Novice Jumpers. She was fast and even with the weavepole entrance mistake was still 15 seconds under course time.



Her second run of the day was Novice Standard. Although  she didn't qualify as she knocked a bar, I was so proud of her. Her contacts were all I could ask, she held them until released. Holding contacts was always a problem with Whisper and when we NQed it would frequently be on missed contacts. Breeze was very very responsive to anything I asked of her.



The next day she qualified in both Jumpers and Standard. In fact I think the last run of the weekend, the standard was the fastest(30 seconds under course time)  and most fun as she was starting to get her confidence up.






All in all a great way to start an agility career!

Mother and Daughter

Breeze and Whisper patiently wait at work for the day to be done. They are two peas in a pod!