TDAA 10/10/10

Sunday, October 10th, Peggy and I drove down to Auburn with Winston to watch the finals of the TDAA National Meet. The actual title of the meet was the 7th Annual TDAA Petite Prix National Agility Tournament. A big name for a lot of little dogs. It was held at the Argus Ranch for Dogs.
We had no idea what we’d find and we were just dying of curiosity to see for ourselves what a Teacup Dog Agility Association meet was like. Would it be outdoors or indoors (it was raining that day)? Would there be a lot of people or not very many? Would there be food?
What we found was startling. First of all, yes, it was held indoors in a nice, very large pavilion, Argus Arena. Yes, there were lots of people there and dozens of dogs. And, yes, there was a food trailer with hot dogs and burgers. We’ve since been told that Argus Ranch is like heaven for dogs and agility training. It certainly is a large, well-kept facility.
Argus Arena is about 26,000 sq ft and is set up with two rings, one on each end of the arena. One ring was set up with 4” jumps for the smaller dogs, and the other was set up with 8” jumps for larger dogs.
Happily we ran into Robin and Norm Carlson who are the owners of Winston’s agility school, Four Paw Sports Center in Lynnwood. fourpawsports.webs.com. They were there competing with their two dogs, toy Klee Kai (which is the singular and the plural), and kindly spent quite a lot of time showing us the ropes and explaining the courses and rules to us. Klee Kai are miniature huskies and they are beautiful, bright energetic dogs. www.huggablehuskies.com
The courses consist of jumps and various “touch” obstacles, like ramps, teeter-tooters, hoops and tunnels. Teams are awarded points for completing the obstacles in a particular order in a set period of time. It’s as much of a test for the owner as it is for the dog. Though the competition can be fierce and the rules somewhat complicated, the emphasis is on fun. It’s really a delight to watch the little dogs in action. They work so hard, and they really want to please and they love the challenge and attention. Winston said that he run those courses faster than anybody. We’ll see.