Tuesday, September 13, 2011

frisbee dog?

 Maybe not.  However my Australian Shepherd Echo (who left a huge hole in my heart in 1989) was most definitely a Frisbee Dog.  In fact she may have actually preferred playing frisbee to eating - and if you knew what an oinker she was, you'd know that was no small thing!  We lived in Kingman but happened to visit Phoenix during a frisbee competition, so I entered her.  Echo was such a beauty to watch, leaping and catching it waaaay in the air, that her photo made it into the AZ Republic. (I know I kept a copy of it somewhere.... just not where I can find it now!)  However, because of my style of throwing, in which the disc sails lazily through the air, we didn't make enough throws in the time allotment to score very high.  But she was definitely a winner in my eyes!

Here is my pretty girl at a Humane Society demonstration in Kingman (from the pages of the Kingman Daily Miner.) 
When I took her to obedience class as a puppy (I had already trained her to do amazing things, but figured the class wouldn't hurt) the other dogs would 'slink' to their owners when called.  Echo would sit there, quivering, as if to say, "Call me, call me already!", practically leaping into my arms when we were 'finally' reunited.  She was so eager to please me that I remember one class where she stepped on a goathead (those are such nasty stickers!) but pluckily kept 'heeling' on 3 feet.  When she got one in a second foot, she was still determined to keep up with me... even with only 2 good feet.  Luckily I noticed her dilemma and fixed her right up.

Here's a picture of her that was printed in Dog Fancy magazine:

Echo was also very good with this trick.

Gotta run - but maybe in another post I'll share her really special (and most useful!) trick!

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