Disc dog, disc dog, disc dog

Wall-e had a breakthrough disc dog moment today! We went in the backyard to do a very short session of disc, with a foldable thin soft (way too many adjectives) material disc meant for humans.

Let me explain why I'm using a disc that I got for free a couple years ago instead of a "proper" competition disc meant for dogs. One of our two competition discs cracked on Sunday, so it's now retired, but I'm not going to throw it out; it was Wall-e's first competition disc and I got it at Regionals last year. Yeah, that's enough of a reason for me. I'm a bit of a hoarder :) and I can't stand to throw out dog items that hold a special memory for me. I can just imagine having a room full of hoarded stuff that supposedly "holds memories" for me. Right now the top shelf of the side closet serves that purpose, but who knows, maybe I'm looking to upgrade.

ANYWAY (getting completely off topic), my other competition disc is Mika's Superdog disc that we got when we apprenticed at the SuperDogs show last year in October. It's a white disc, so it's awesome and would usually really stand out, but I don't use it for throws when there's snow on the ground because it blends into the snow. I do use it for Mika's wiggle-disc games, though (wiggling the disc on the ground to build drive).

I am planning on getting a couple of Jawz Pup discs within the next couple of months.

...So that's why I was using a material disc that gets tooth-holes in it pretty easily. As I said before, it's meant for humans, but it's not one of those hard plastic discs that can hurt doggy mouths, so I'm fine with it. I also use Wall-e's Soft Bite Floppy Disc on occasion, but more as a reward for agility than for disc training, since really loves that disc and I want that to transfer to agility.

Back to today...I knelt down and threw the disc five feet in front of me. The annoying thing about this disc is that if it's not thrown perfectly straight, it does a boomerang-interpretation and tries to curve back to me, doing a nose-dive to the ground. You're not going to see a lot of perfectly-straight throws when I'm throwing it and my first throw proved that point! I threw it and Wall-e raced ahead in the direction it was going, but then it swooped towards me and crashed into the snow. He grabbed it nevertheless and quickly brought it back to me, dropping it once, but then picking it up again to bring it to me.

The next throw was the one that astounded me. It was possibly the best throw I've ever done. At first I thought, "I threw it too far," because it did go farther than the planned five feet, but then I realized, "It's still up there! It's not boomeranging!" The next thing I knew, Wall-e was leaping into the air to try to catch it. We both set personal records today: me for best/straightest throw and Wall-e for best attempt at catching the disc. He ALMOST caught it and I think I may have even caught a glimpse of his nose or muzzle touching the disc, but that could have been my imagination. Still...SO CLOSE!!

We ran inside and, with me chanting excitedly, "GOOD BOY, GOOD BOY!" I took out a good portion of the cold cuts from the fridge. Did he ever go wild for that!!

Disc dog is fun!