THe road so far
by Jasmine Mackay, age 16
It started on the 8th of March, 2010, after a visit to the newsagent to pick up the latest issue of Pet New Zealand, followed by a late night reading it. One article in particular caught my attention. Dogs trained do to tricks and agility and doing demonstrations at shows? If this Chelsea Marriner could do it, then so could I. I was up an hour earlier than usual the next morning, digging through the piles of unused stuff in the sheds around the farm for enough material to build a mini agility course. I had the dog, and I had the motivation. Jessica came out at one point while I was taping bamboo stakes onto a hoop, and I roped her into helping. From there she progressed quickly from reluctant assistant to eager teammate. Both dogs adjusted easily. I’d already tried some basic agility with Sparkie previously, so for her it was nothing new. Tess took a little longer to catch on, but within less than two months we were performing our first (and very short) routine for Chantel’s 10th birthday. Our six month stint on the Bundaberg dairy farm came to an end five days later, and we arrived in Gympie just in time for the annual show. Sparkie managed Grand Champion, while Tess freaked out at all the other dogs and only got one ribbon. Seeing Tess’s reaction, I decided getting into an agility class would benefit us all. But the response we got from the Gympie Dog Obedience when we showed up on an agility training night was far from satisfactory – “You must spend two months in the basic obedience class before you can even try our agility equipment.” Both our dogs were well-trained in all their basic commands. It was the socialization and agility work we were after. Yes, I can understand why they thought our dogs were untrained – we were a raggedy bunch of kids living in an old school bus. But they never gave us a chance to show them otherwise. Part of me felt like joining the club anyway, and putting up with two months of repeating the basics I'd spent nearly two years working on. After all, they were the professionals, the adults. They probably knew what was best But the other part of me said we didn't need professional training to make a mark on the world. After that night, I was even more confident in my own abilities than before. To this day, none of the Superdogs have ever been to a training class.
In June, we took the next step in our development – I named the team.“The Superdogs,” a two dog-two handler team whose only plan for the future was to perform tricks. Agility took a backseat as travelling prevented the setting up of our course. We continued performing for our family and Lassie joined the team in July, but things kind of slowed down for a while. Then, in September, we were invited by a friend to her daughter’s birthday party at a playground in Redcliffe. Sparkie and Tess performed their trick routine almost perfectly; ignoring the crowd of over 30 people watching us, people walking down the footpath just metres away, and a kid bouncing a soccer ball not that far behind us. After that, our dad picked up a job in Gympie that lasted for all of six weeks and then he got fired for a bizarre reason. In February 2011 we picked up our training again, and I brought 8 year old Chana onto the team as Lassie’s handler/trainer. We had a few ups and downs over the next few months, continuing our family performances, until one evening in early April when we stopped by the Goomeri gas station for hot chips. There was a poster on the window for the Goomeri Pumpkin Festival. After a quick talk with Jessica and Chana, we agreed it was time to take the Superdogs to the next level. A few emails back and forth with the organiser of the festival later and it was official – we were going to perform at the Goomeri Pumpkin Festival on the 29th of May. Tess’s fear-aggression was almost nonexistent at the Gympie Show this time and we got six ribbons in total. A week after that was the festival, and all the dogs did great. There were a few mistakes, of course, and a few “oh, no, this is not good!” moments, but we came away from the festival feeling very proud of ourselves and our dogs. We kept up our family performances every month or so, as I tried to find another show that would take us. It wasn’t until September that I managed to get us into the Kenilworth Show, where we picked up Sambo and added Chantel onto the team. Around that time we also introduced the team to disc, which Tess especially enjoyed. 2012 brought trouble to the Superdogs. In late May Lassie gave birth to nine puppies, meaning we couldn’t go to the Goomeri Pumpkin Festival. We managed to do the Wallumbilla Show early in the month and the Gympie Show in the middle of it. We realized Sambo wasn’t cut out to be a Superdog, and had to part with him in July. In September we nearly lost Sparkie to some sort of gastro bug thing, but to our relief she pulled through. Our Sambo replacement dog, Asta, adored us but was terrified of strangers, so she left us in October. The rest of the year wasn’t much better, with our family Christmas performance having to be cancelled when both me and Jessica got sick. So far this year’s looking brighter. We’re starting to get invited to perform at shows, instead of having to ask – including the Gympie RSPCA Million Paws Walk last month – and we’ve already done three shows, with several other shows planned. We’ve upgraded our gear and added agility and disc demonstrations to our performances. All the dogs have improved with their disc and we have several new tricks we’re teaching them. We’ve also added a new pup, “Freya,” to the team. We got top ranks in trick/agility/obedience competitions at the Blayney Show in March and at the Gympie Show in May. The future, for the moment, looks better than it’s ever been for the Superdogs. |