We did it!

[bighoneydog]

Hi everyone,

Some of you may know that I have been preparing a Canine Freestyle dance routine with my Great Dane, Honey, in the last few weeks for a public performance. It was a last-minute decision to learn a new routine instead of doing our old one and so we had been practising VERY intensively!

Anyway, we had our performance last weekend and it went quite well!

[MEDIA]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkFZzSS4slI[/MEDIA]

Thanks to all those who offered advice on how to speed her up...as you can see in the video, she did still get distracted and "slow down" in the middle but overall, she was pretty enthusiastic. She may never be as fast and agile as a colllie but for a giant breed, she is doing pretty damned well! :dogsmile:

I did give her a break of 2 days in the middle of last week from training (following on from Snook's advice) - so maybe that helped. To be honest, I think it helped me more than her! :dogtongue2:

OK, now we can relax a bit. Am going to start teaching her to cross her paws!

 

[tx_cowgirl]

Very nice! Lol, with her looong legs Cross Paws should be relatively easy. ^^

Honey was muuuch more enthusiastic than I saw in her other vids!! Well done you two! Lol, I'm guessing that was the shimmy(8:35 I think)? Very cute. I imagine it was probably nice for her to do a full routine in front of a crowd outside of a competition building. Little more relaxing on her part and yours. She was very speedy!!

Really enjoyed it. Nice job!

 

[szecsuani]

Wow this was awersome!!!! I love great danes!!

 

[snooks]

Bravo bravo!! I don't know if you notice the crowd was much more attentive and impressed by Honey. Her size alone gets you a bit of a spotlight doesn't it. And you have delightful moves that with your arms and legs that make your routine much more graceful. Looking at the other competitors as nice as they were they were so focused on their dogs to the point of being a little non-animated and serious. You not only have a more dance like style but you and Honey have a very obvious connection that I didn't see with the other teams. The crowd had lots more oohs or aahhs for you guys than they did with the previous teams.

So needless to say I'm impressed. And I LOVE that shimmy. It was my favorite. I want to teach my two that move. So many successful freestyle teams have that little bit extra - like you seem to be forging with Honey. It's great to take a huge dog in a sport where you don't see them and pull it off with such class. Give that big girl an ear scratch for me. :dogtongue2:

 

[tx_cowgirl]

The shimmy is absolutely adorable. Snooks is right, the crowd was much more impressed with you two and quite frankly I was too! I think there is a distinct difference between a dog handler with a well-trained dog and a dog trainer/owner/lover with their buddy who they've worked a lot with. You two looked very natural and fun while the others looked more rehearsed and stiff. Even Honey looked more comfortable than the other dogs.

Like Snooks, it's great to see large breeds in sports. I've seen some Danes in agility, and although they aren't really fast, they do seem to love it and it's wonderful to see someone taking the time to work with a dog that isn't frequently seen in the agility realm. (Or freestyle, flyball, whatever.) I love my BCs and love watching them do what they do but it's just awesome seeing out-of-the-ordinary breeds succeeding in the same sports.

 

[stormi]

Well Done...there were some really great sections! You both did really well :dogsmile:

and.......Honey is just soooo beautiful :dogwub: