Ionia Free Fair: Ionia, Michigan
This weekend was the Ionia Free Fair in Ionia, Michigan. I had pre-registered Midas for one splash on Friday and one on Saturday. Due to a cherry mishap whose details you can read about here , Midas was not feeling well enough to compete on Friday.
Saturday
Up bright and early and see that Midas seems to be feeling pretty close to his normal self. Thank goodness!! Pack everything up (which is WAY easier with the soft-sided kennels) and head out. When we get there, there is no one there. Ok, there are people, but not many, maybe 15-20 total. Unload, set up the EZ-Up (I pinch my fingers TWICE during this) and kennel the boys. Register and find out the reason why there is no one there. There is another event being run by UAD somewhere else, which Milt is at, with all the toys/shirts (which was a real bummer because I wanted to buy one of each) and the fair hasn’t even opened yet.
Practice jumps went fairly well. Midas’s attention span is pretty limited. I haven’t had time to practice with him on The Chase technique at home so that was completely lacking on the dock. He was just jumping. Honestly though, I was so thrilled that he was feeling up to it after the cherry/rubbing alcohol ordeal that it didn’t matter. During competition his farthest jump was only 17′, which ended up being about 9th place in the senior division out of 15 dogs. Not too spectacular, but I don’t think he was quite 100% yet, and I also did not time my throws the best (again). I need to practice my technique at home! We stayed to watch Catch-It, which was really entertaining. Eric got some fantastic photos of that. But, I’m not posting any links to them until we get the rest of the site up and running 
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Since we had a bunch of time to kill before we had to leave we decided to try Mason off the dock during practice again. It had been a month since the last time we had attempted and he’s now confident enough to jump out of the truck, both from the backseat and from the tailgate so he’s definitely getting braver. Eric had asked early in the week if it would be ok with me if he was the one to compete Mason. I had said that was fine but I would really prefer it if we could both compete both of the boys. If they would respond to both of us and if both of our throws were decent. Anwho, I told him to go ahead and see if he could get Mason to go off the dock (he went off the exit ramp with absolutely no hesitation again), but Eric was too nervous so I went up. Mason was SO CLOSE, he was hanging off the edge, but just not quite brave enough yet. I think we’ll try him off a lower dock for awhile before asking him to go off regulation again. He did run right up the exit ramp and dive into the pool to get the tug though 
. He’s so cute and enthusiastic!
Eric worked up to taking Midas off the dock during practice. This was Eric’s very first time ever jumping Midas. We had a couple of false starts and one refusal but he got him to go and it was near 18′ so he did really well. Proud of both of them!
Wiley was there (the adult silver from the DockDogs event in Battle Creek) with his family. I am completely in love with their toddler, he is the cutest baby I have ever seen. Mason thought he would stand up to Wiley with a little lip curl, but when Wiley sniffed him a little more he rolled right over onto his back. Silly puppy. We have video of Mason trying the dock out, Eric jumping Midas and Mason meeting Wiley and hopefully will be able to post those on here soon too. Until then, here’s some of Midas’s jumps:
While the soft-sided kennels were super easy to haul and set-up. The boys didn’t take to them as well as I thought they were going to. They were fine if they were both in them. But as soon as one was out, the other was not good. Mason would lunge into the mesh sides of his every time we went to put Midas back into his kennel, he was trying to reach him through the walls. Mason also insisted on lying in the seams and making one side lopsided while doing so. Midas learned that if he tucked his head under, pushed it into the door and started walking he could roll the kennel (like a hamster wheel), wherever he wanted to go. We came back from trying to get Mason to jump to find Midas half way to the dock, kennel upside down and some extremely nice lady trying to stop him. So…we’re going to have to get tie-downs for them and something to put on the floor to prevent them from rolling them.