Kristine Gunter | Dog Photographer, Writer, Trainer

I puppy-sat Lexie the Rottweiler on Tuesday–I’m still recovering from it today. I’m not sure where exactly I got the (mistaken) idea that Rotties wouldn’t be ‘driven’ dogs. Not-so-little Lexie has more drive than all three of my dogs combined. Other than a brief nap she took in the afternoon, she was on the move for twelve hours straight. She ran, she played, she did tricks and she continued with her flyball education. Despite Lexie’s best attempts to charm Zoey, Zoey would have NOTHING to do with her. I don’t think I’ve ever heard (or seen) Zoey snarl and snort as much as she did on Tuesday.

So this past weekend Zoey and I headed back up to Canada for our second flyball tournament in a month. We had a great time hanging out with our friends and teammates and running some great races. I felt a little bad that Zoey wasn’t in peak condition going into the weekend but quickly realized I may have underestimated her physical prowess. On Saturday she set a new personal best time of 5.6 seconds running as the anchor dog on one of our two teams. I still can’t believe a dog with such short legs can run 34 yards, go over eight jumps, hit a box and retrieve a ball in 5.6 seconds. Needless to say I was very proud of her. On our very last race of the day on Saturday Zoey also managed to hit the 10,000 point mark–giving her a new title: “Flyball Master Excellent”. She’s only the 7th Cardi to ever earn that particular title so I was, once again, very proud of her.

We won’t be attending another tournament until the end of June but in the meantime we’ll try our hand at yet another sport–lure coursing! I’m hopeful that Zoey will find it almost as much fun as flyball.

Time is certainly flying by these days–I think I stayed home one night last week.

The Citizen’s Academy just keeps getting better with each week. Two weeks ago we got to learn about the K-9 unit–complete with a demo by one of the department’s Malinois police dogs. One of the deputies characterized the Malinois breed as being like, “skinny Shepherds on crank”. I learned about a police dog training/competition I hadn’t previously heard of–KNPV. In case you were wondering what those initials stand for it’s: Koninklijke Nederlandse Politiehond Vereniging. So there, you learned something new today.

Here’s a little video of a KNPV police dog competition that was held in Croatia. These dogs are nothing short of amazing.

Yes, I need to tighten up her turns a bit if she’s ever going to win a competition…

I know it sounds contrived to say, but time really DOES fly when you are having fun. The past couple of weeks have been oh-so-busy with flyball, my ride-along with a deputy and the citizen’s academy that I’m doing with the Clackamas County Sheriff’s Office. Oh–and don’t forget the talent show at Reed that Zoey and I just participated in!

Flyball

I’ve been trying to get Zoey into top shape so that she’ll be able to earn her 10,000 point title at our next tournament. I also started training a puppy in the basics of flyball. Remember little Lexie from a few months ago? Well, she’s not really very little anymore. She is, however, one of the smartest and most athletic Rotties I’ve seen. I ‘borrowed’ her this past weekend to take her to a puppy flyball class just to see how she’d handle it and was pleasantly surprised when I got her tugging with me in a VERY distracting environment. She also successfully completed the basic jumping exercises and was introduced to clicker training.

Ride-Along

My eight-hour ride-along with a sheriff’s deputy ended up being a great experience. The deputy I went out with was very patient in answering my questions and I was amazed by his multi-tasking abilities. It’s not too often you see someone who is capable of driving while simultaneously talking on a radio, entering information into a computer with one hand and keeping an eye out for a variety of traffic infractions. At one point during the evening we were doing 75mph down one of the busiest streets in Portland (with sirens blaring and lights flashing) which was pretty darn exciting.

Citizen’s Academy

My first night with the citizen’s academy was very fun. It was clear by the end of the evening that everyone involved in the sheriff’s office truly enjoy their jobs and their enthusiasm is definitely contagious! The first night included a meeting with the Sheriff himself as well as a simulated traffic stop exercise that everyone got to participate in. All those years of watching the show ‘COPS’ definitely paid off for me–I knew JUST how to handle the situation I was presented with. We were also privy to a ‘witness’ exercise, whereby a man (wearing sunglasses and a baseball cap) broke into the lecture room we were all sitting in and ‘stole’ a bag. The academy instructors quickly handed out witness description forms to all the academy participants and asked us to describe our ‘perp’. The only thing all twenty of us agreed on was the fact that the person who stole the bag was, indeed, of the male persuasion. Beyond that we weren’t of much help in giving out identifying information: Our suspect (based on all of our descriptions) ended up being somewhere between 5’6″ and 6′ 4″ tall. He was somewhere between 160 and 240 pounds and had either a blue, green, brown, red or yellow shirt on. It definitely made me realize how difficult it is to accurately describe someone when you only see them for a few seconds!

Talent Show

I’m told I’ll have a copy of Zoey’s performance at the Reed talent show by tomorrow–it should be interesting to watch.  At the very beginning of the show everyone in the audience was clapping and carrying on and Zoey decided she wanted NO part in the festivities. I was surprised by how sensitive she was to the sound–after all, at flyball tournaments she spends hours on end listening to hundreds of dogs barking! Anyhow, I had several minutes to calm her down so I sat just outside the performance area and fed her treats while she listened to all the noise. By the time it was our turn to go on stage she seemed to have conquered her fear and so we performed all the tricks I had planned. The ‘jumping machine’ was a clear favorite, followed closely by the trick where Zoey puts herself in her crate and shuts the door. She also debuted her barrel racing trick (which I almost didn’t do since we hadn’t practiced it very much) and she performed it flawlessly.

Photos!

Huge thanks to Jeff Marsh for taking these photos of Zoey at the flyball tournament last weekend! I love seeing my crazy girl in action and these photos make me realize just how much she loves that silly flyball game!