My Dog's The Fastest!

There was a press release in the file at work one day about a dog lure course being set up for the weekend. My interest was less news related as it was my-dog-related. Our dog Ginger has the unbounded energy levels of a young dog. She is also athletic and quick.

Lure courses are where a foxtail or some other thing that dogs like are pulled through an agility course. This particular one is called Course A'lure and they travel around to different Jack Russel trials in the region and set up their course. Any dog can run through it which is good because Ginger isn't a Jack Russel (although she might be part jack - we just don't know.

The lure is pulled through tunnels, around sharp turns, over jumps, and then through a sensor that stops a timer. It is six hundred feet long. From what I understand 12 or 13 seconds is a good time for a fast dog.

They had been running dogs all day by the time we showed up. Mostly jack russels. The best time so far for the weekend was just over 12 seconds. We watched for a while then tried our dog.

We sent Ginger through a couple times so she could get used to the course. She was real interested. Nose down, ears up she trotted after the lure. Once she got used to how this whole thing workde, she kicked it up a notch. BAM!!

Ginger's problem was she was more focused on catching the lure than she was on getting a good time. So she did things like jump over the fence and try to cut it off at a turn. Or she fell down and rolled under the fence, then tried to cut it off at another turn. Or she would follow it all the way to the end but not run into the finishing area and stop the clock.

The operator eventually helped us out by keeping the lure just out of reach of Ginger. She tried her damndest to get ahold of that thing and flawlessly followed the foxtail through the course. As she ran past the sensor, the clock stopped at 11.86, best time of the weekend!

Everyone who watched her run encouraged us to get her into some sort of competition running. I didn't matter what we did, but to do something. We've tried flyball, but Ginger seems to focus more on antagonizing the other dogs who are pracicing than on flyball.

Anyway, I just wanted to let everyone know, my dog is the fastest.




Oh, and Erica showed some stage mom tendencies as Ginger kept screwing up on the lure course - I better keep an eye on that when we have kids.