Sweet! I am SO psyched!

We're taking Lucy and Dax to a dock diving retreat this weekend in Sequim. It's a good ways away, but we have a room booked at a hotel that allows dogs (awesome!) and will be able to start training Lucy for dock diving with the dock diving club. The place where they're going also has an agility course and a flyball course, which I think Dax will be more into than dock diving as he's not too keen on the water yet.

Here's the place we're going (the site doesn't talk about the dog training area much, but the club told us they have an extensive dog training area that you can access for $5 a day):
http://www.sunnydellshootinggrounds.com/

And this is where we're staying:
http://www.sequimbaylodge.com/

The dock diving club's website is here:
http://www.pugetsounddockdogs.org/

I emailed ahead of time to make sure that it would be appropriate for us to come as new members with no dock diving experience. The person who responded said this is actually one of the best opportunities to work on training with other members as their competitions are always very busy. So yay! I'm so excited to do this with Lucy!

Link about the retreat: http://web.mac.com/pugetsounddockdogs/PSDD/Events/Entries/2008/5/8_Weekend_of_fun%21_.html

We opted out of camping because I don't know how we'd do it with the dogs and we have no camping gear whatsoever. Plus I don't completely trust Dax not to bolt if given the opportunity.

So excited!

PS- Anyone else here going? We can't go up until Sunday because I work on Saturday, but we'll be heading up Sunday morning and staying through Monday. :)

Wow...good luck! That sounds great! Let us know how it goes!

Looks like y'all are in for an awesome weekend!!! Good luck...and have a blast!:thumb4:

It was fun... I sadly didn't get any good pictures of Lucy diving. When we first got down to the dock, she ran up to the end, stopped and looked, ran back down the dock to another dog who then ran and leapt into the water, and Lucy went flying right behind him. Her first three jumps were like she'd done it a hundred times. :thumb4: Then one time she hesitated and slipped in sort of backwards and didn't want to dive anymore after that. I think it scared her. After that, she would go up to the edge, lean over, paw at the water and then very carefully jump in, but no more dives. :(

Dax got very excited about all the dogs in the water and did the same thing Lucy did-- flew off the dock after another dog... but then it was like he realized "WAIT, I CAN'T SWIM!!!" :scared: He started panicking and swimming that way dogs do when they don't really know how (pulling their feet up out of the water). He managed to make it over to the side of the dock near me (I was trying to direct him to the place to climb up), but as soon as he got near me, he panicked more and started going under. :eek: So I threw myself down on the dock and pulled him out by his collar. He was flailing so badly, I thought I was going to have to actually go in. My arms are now swollen and bruised from the flailing. Needless to say, Dax wasn't interested in going back in the water again after that (not even up to his ankles). But Lucy did have a blast swimming.

Pictures to come.

Oh man I missed this thread. I'm sorry Dax got scare. I bet Lucy had a blast with swimming. I think Milcreek fair will have dock dive soon. Last year I took Denis there but she didn't really enjoy it. She loves to swim but not so hot about jumping off. I might try it again this year.

what a great event you went to. too bad that Dax got scared. I have been hoping that puget dock dogs would have some local event where they have open practice where they would work with dogs who have never done dock diving before. I was told that they do do that occasionally but there is a small fee involved. the one time I did see there was something like that it was only for an hour but other clubs have had similar things where it was done all day but not the our local club as fas as I know.