Sunday, November 11, 2007

Canine Freestyle

Today we attended a meeting of the Footloose in the Carolinas group. This is a canine freestyle club affiliated with the World Canine Freestyle Organization. This is a very new dog sport, informally called "heelwork to music" or "dancing with your dog." They are excited to have us, because they think they have been the only club in the country without a single Border Collie or Aussie member. So now they can claim Rowdy.


The meeting was at the Community Center gym in Cashiers, NC.


What the heck is canine freestyle? For a great example, click on this video at YouTube:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=crmD_B8ERzk. Watch it all the way through (4 min). It's worth it. The battle rages on, but it does eventually wind down into more great dancing, and an ending with a twist.


I must say, Rowdy had an absolute ball. He got to meet new dogs, socialize with the dogs, meet new people, play, do some obedience and Rally with me in front of all the dogs, watch the other dogs with their owners working together and doing things Rowdy has never seen before, and he also had a lot of fun with Mike. As usual, Mike and Rowdy invented a new game, and this game had Rowdy lit up like a Christmas tree with excitement and focus. Mike took Rowdy's holey ball and threw it through a basketball hoop. Rowdy's job was to get the ball and return it to Mike.


The club has 30 members scattered around western NC and upstate SC. Today there were three dog/handler teams at the meeting. The club is just beginning their second year. The woman who runs it, Deanna, clearly has made it a work of love for the sport. She is just amazing in how much she has done to build this club, and she has had a lot of success in their first year. They had participants from over 10 states at their first show, which was just recently held in Greenville.


We did a couple of pictures:


Here we are getting ready to pull out from home:
And here is Rowdy meeting and greeting one of the other dogs:

The drive up there was uhhh gorgeous. We took a scenic route through the Jocassee River Gorge area - a conservation area protected in perpetuity by Duke Energy and the States of SC/NC. Absolutely breathtaking in the autumn with vivid colors, canopied roads for most of the way to the main route between Cashiers and Brevard. Has to be one of the most beautiful drives in the country. It also took us 2.5 hours to go 90 miles. The curves were so short you could stand at the apex of one curve and spit, and you'd be hitting the apex of the next curve...well, almost. We arrived an hour late. We came back by a different route - over Caesar's Head - and found it to be a nice, relaxing little drive with a few twists and turns by comparison. (This was formally known as the twisty-est route we've found yet).
I used to think this Freestyle was embarassingly stupid. Then I thought it might be fun. Today I was impressed with many of the moves these ladies have put on their dogs. It was creative, appealing, and it was totally obvious that the dogs were having a ball. Have you ever seen a dog do rollover after rollover after rollover down a floor - with his tail wagging continuously as he rolled round and round? Now that we found an enjoyable route to Cashiers, we're looking forward to more of this sort of fun.

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