Tag Archives: ryker

Dog Sports Open: Best in Show

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I had to get up at the crack of dawn this past Saturday for a dog event that I had been invited to attend. (Okay, well maybe not that early since I overslept my alarm like an idiot!) I can’t tell you how regular an early wake up call is in the life of a dog sport addict, but it was so worth it! (The two hour drive…yeah, not so much – especially after I realized I had forgotten my wallet and I was fifteen minutes from my destination!)

I arrived at Cher Car Kennels just after they had started the course walk through. I was nervous when I got out there but I was among like company.  No one knew the layout until the same time I did. Now I didn’t feel quite ad silly.  It didn’t quite kill the butterflies that were brawling MMA-style in my gut much but it allowed me to get my nerves up enough to sign up for Beginner (Obedience only).

The Beginner level was all on leash.  I felt the safest doing that since I haven’t had the time (or desire) to really train or work with Ryker much. (My wonderful cheer team thought I could, but I was absolutely terrified!)

They called this a training trial.  This meant we had the option (with a 5pt deduction) to use a pinch collar.  I, admittedly, took advantage of this offer.  The extra reminder to him was well worth it for my piece of mind.

This year’s course was designed to be similar to a ‘day at the dog show’. (I had a laugh over this since I am not a major fan of doing conformation-type events.). The layout was arranged to expose the dog to a variety of real world scenarios.  In the protection phases, obedience only dogs weren’t penalized if they didn’t react but were given bonus points if they did.

The course layout was six stations long and definitely a challenge when you had to pretend to be in danger at times.  Here the are:

STATION 1: The dog was put in a ‘crate’ on wheels and taken to the second station.  During this exercise, the dog wasn’t supposed to panic or try and escape. (Ryker had a momentary ‘what the heck?!’ moment but settled soon after.)

STATION 2: The dog was unloaded from the crate and asked (or placed if the handler chose) on a ‘grooming’ table.  They then had their coat ‘groomed’ via a blow dryer. (Ryker was great considering being dried with a blow dryer wasn’t a common occurrence. Yay for wash and wear dogs!)

STATION 3: After being groomed, the dog and handler report to the ‘show ring’ where the ring steward sends you to ‘your’ car for your arm band that you have forgotten.

Once in the car, a decoy (in a full suit) starts acting like a threat – banging on the vehicle and yelling. The dog is supposed to defend the car on all sides to ‘protect’ the handler. (Once again, Ryker surprised me.  I never expected him to ‘protect’ me.)

STATION 4: After exiting the vehicle, the dog and handler had to rush back to the ‘show ring’.  In the ring there were two other ‘dogs’ (i.e. stuffies on PVC pipe leashes) that were being shown too (and acting like freaks since their ‘handlers’ had too much fun there.  Ha!). The handler and dog had to gait/heel around the ring with the other ‘dogs’.  The dog was supposed to leave the others around. (Fat chance with Ryker!  He thought they were flirtpole toys!)

STATION 5: The dog and handler were given 1st place.  They had to go up on a multilevel winners podium and ignore the ‘other dogs’ and their handlers.

Once in place, a trophy is put in front of the dog and the dog is agitated so they guard the object.  During the threat display a bucket of plastic balls is dumped onto the dog and handler.  The dog is allowed to startle but should defend shortly after recovering.  (Ryker did exactly what he was supposed to and defended the trophy before and after.)

STATION 6: This was the final station.  For obedience only dogs, they had to do a friendly greeting in a position of control (sit/down-stay).  The dogs doing protection as well would have to do a friendly greeting and then hit the decoy when he ‘attacked’ but out on command. (Cheryl allowed Ryker to be agitated and gave him a bite too.  He also outed beautifully and had the crowd cheering wildly.)

In the obedience only class, Ryker finished with 105 points out of a possible 90pts (Yay bonus points!).  For not having trained much at all in weeks, I couldn’t be happier.  We will definitely be doing this again next year.

Oh, Michelle and Liz?  If you happen to read this…I promise I won’t chicken out of Intermediate next year.  Haha!


Left to Right: Michelle with Ruby & Riggs, Liz with Inara and me with Ryker.
Photo Credit: Demo Dick

Happy 6th Birthday, Ryker!

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It’s been an amazing six year ride, buddy.  You’ve taken me from birth until now in true pit bull fashion.  Your never say quit attitude has made you a phenomenal weight pull dog, obedience dog and all around companion.

It’s really hard to believe that six years ago at 11:04am, you will officially be a year older.  We’ve faced many trials and tribulations.  Despite the early puppy-hood and adolescent trials and tribulations we faced – constant UTIs, potty training problems, dog/dog reactivity, etc. – you’ve always stuck by my side. A constant companion and a true “Momma’s Boy” – it’s true, everyone says it when they see the adoration in your eyes when I rub your little pointy ears or kiss the very top of your snowy white blaze.

You’ve brought joy not just to my life but to that of many others, despite the hardships you’ve faced in your canine life.  I am blessed with such a dynamic, beautiful dog and I can’t wait for the many years we will spend together.  I love you, my brindlicious brat boy.


From puppyhood…


Until now.  You have my heart.

The Real Meaning of Roadwork

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No, this entry isn’t really about walking and conditioning your dog.  It’s about our trip into the great unknown.  Our first vacation that doesn’t involve some dog event as the main course of action and I’m so freaking excited!

Tomorrow morning, bright and early, we are heading down to Virginia.  More specifically, we’re heading down toward Virginia Beach/Chesapeake/Portsmouth for four days before swinging up toward Washington D.C./Arlington.  It’s that time of the year that we get a week off of work and this year we intend to take advantage of it.  Getting to see friends and be ‘tourists’ for the first time in a long time is definitely a worthy reason to take a road trip.

We’ll be loading up the dog mobile with our gear and the gear of four of the five dogs.  We would be taking five, but unfortunately, Duo doesn’t travel well.  The stress of a long road trip does his system no good so he gets to stay behind and enjoy a week’s vacation as the only dog with Grandpa.  Luna, Lyric, Ryker and Mika, however, think that traveling is very awesome and they can’t wait to be going.

The one unfortunate thing is that BSL has limited our choice in areas to stay in up in the Washington D.C. area since a few of the less expensive hotels are in areas where there are restrictions.  We won’t put our dogs in that risk and so are avoiding those areas and spending a bit more money for a canine family-friendly vacation.  It sucks, but it is what it is when it comes to the response to owning an APBT because of the irresponsibility and management of others who have ruined it for the whole.

So, right now, it’s t-minus less than 24 hours before we hit the road.  So excited!

Life. Love. Happiness.

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There have been a lot of changes in my life in the last two weeks and it has caused my blog to suffer a bit of neglect while I settled into what has become my new life.  Everything that has happened in the last two weeks is a new path to follow to hopefully better my life.

On May 21st, I posted about Luna’s birthday.  Well, that’s not the end of the story.  That day, my then fiancé and I shared our wedding vows together at the local court house surrounded by friends, family and Luna.  She truly was the reason we struggled to make it because neither of us could imagine life without her or one another.  It was a truly beautiful moment and one that was nine years in the making.  The love of two people and one little pit bull is a beautiful thing.

We opted to do our reception at a later date (July 2012, tentatively) and instead did a simple dinner after the ceremony to commemorate that particular moment in time.  We enjoyed a quiet meeting of the families at the Outback Steakhouse that was literally right next door.  My dad walked the hoard of nieces and nephews over since they were entirely too full of themselves to load up in the car for a short jaunt because they were having entirely too much fun running amok on the lawn of the court house.

The next big thing to happen is the place where my husband and I work was sold to a different company.  We are there through the duration of the transition (120 days) and possibly up to a total of a year through a subsidiary company that will take over our paycheck payments.  It’s a whole different ball game from what we are used to but it’s going to enable both of us to work a crap load of overtime and bank every available penny possible as we hunt for our dream property to start our family with ten and eleven hour shifts and up to six days a week.  It’s brutal on me – my knees and hips ache regularly after a day there – but its income until I can get my boarding/training facility dream a reality.  It’s a scary prospect, but at the same time I can’t be too picky about the fact that I am employed when there are many that aren’t.

Other than that, nothing else has been tremendously life altering.  We had our ADBA Fun Show on June 2nd and it went off without a hitch.  It seemed like everyone had a good time.

My wonderful boy, Ryker, took Best of Show under judge Mike Norrod and took Best Brindle under judge Dave Wolf – both gentlemen have quite a few years in the breed – and it was an honor to place under them.

Lyric took first in the female treadmill class and Best Overall by beating out the male winner.  She topped out at almost 14MPH in the 2 minutes she hauled fanny on the slat mill.  I’m so proud of my little Tinker Toy.  She’s really starting to come into her own and I would have never imagined the brain transplant she seemed to get after her emergency spay.

But, other than that, nothing much has really been going on.  Training has been put on hold for a while because of other things and we’ve been living the life of a newly married couple.  <3

Getting Back to Nature

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We went on a little nature walk at a local park.  Normally, we’d bring the whole pack but since we headed out shortly after attending an NWDA weight pull, we only had three of the five with us – Luna, Mika and Ryker.  We had an absolute blast and the dogs got to sniff and bounce and get out and about for a few hours with not a care in the world.


Luna watches a couple of squirrels play.


Ryker can’t decide if he’d rather pee or watch nearby birds flittering around.

Mika telling us what she thinks of pictures.

Ready to hit the trails. [Left to Right: Ryker, Luna & Mika]

Back In The Saddle Again

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The last time we weight pulled we attended the K9 Fanciers/AABC UKC pull.  As I blogged about prior, UKC altered their rules to limit how much a dog can actually pull.  For a dog like Ryker, who pulled this past weekend, which is an incredibly hard thing to do.  Limiting a dog that has been conditioned and trained to continue to pull well above the 20pt rule – which is only 35x his body weight on the surface we pulled (wheels).   Ryker has pulled well above the 20pt pull with UKC on wheels and has taken many Most Weight Pulled (MWP) and Most Weight Pulled Percentage (MWPP) placements in the regular and Grand classes (when they were offered – they have since been discontinued).

We have not pulled competitively since the weight pull rule change, that is, until last weekend.  We had a chance to get out and pull with the NWDA (National Working Dog Association) for the first time.  Their rules are very similar to the APA (American Pulling Alliance) in that there is one foul and then the dog is done (versus the UKC where you have two fouls), but you are only able to pass two weight increases before you must pull again (APA is unlimited passes).  It really was, in my honest opinion, the best of both the UKC and the APA pulling rules.

Ryker weighed in at a fluffy 51lbs – about four pounds more than I usually pull him at when he’s conditioned specifically for dog sports.  Since we have been out of commission for competition for the last few months, I expected him to be heavier since we had worked to put weight on for the cold Michigan winter.  He outdid what I expected him to do since I went there just to have a blast and work with my partner and my friend.  He pulled 2,078lbs on Saturday for 40.74x his body weight and 2,180lbs on Sunday for 42.74x his body weight.  He took 2nd place in his class against our favorite ‘nemesis’, Jake. (And no, we really don’t think Jake is our nemesis.  He’s a phenomenal pull dog and it’s a pleasure to pull against him.)

The same camaraderie that used to be present at the UKC pulls was there in spades.  It was nice to see some familiar faces, but even more to see a lot of the newer weight pullers who had been training at Currey’s Family Pet Care and were incredibly new to the competition aspect.  Those of us who are ‘old hats’ at this have a lot to look forward to with our new ‘competition’ this coming season and I, for one, can’t wait to attend another NWDA pull.  Thank you, NWDA for giving me and other weight pullers another place to work our dogs!