Clean Run Magazine - March 2009 - 21

LB: How did you choose Hawkeye? ND: My husband and I lived on a 43' sailboat, and we were planning to sail around the world. In May 1998 my husband had a heart attack while we were on a 100k bike ride. Our lives were forever changed. About a month after the heart attack, we were at a coffee shop with friends. We overheard one friend, a vet at the local shelter, telling another friend about a Golden that was not being shown to the public because they were going to send him to Golden Retriever rescue. I thought walking a dog would be good exercise for my husband, Leo, and off we went to the Humane Society. We filled out the questionnaires, and they brought in a long-legged skinny Golden that came sliding across the floor. He was so cute and playful that it really was love at first sight. Hawkeye was six months old and incredibly energetic. He was at the shelter because his previous owner lived in an apartment, couldn’t handle this highspirited pup, and kept him on a chain. LB: What type of dog were you looking for? and I asked “What’s a recall?” Jim sent us elsewhere for our beginner lessons. When Sandy Rogers taught us a stop at the contact zone, I asked her why we would want to stop, since agility is a speed sport. We entered our first show after only 12 weeks of lessons. I didn’t realize at the time that this was not the most brilliant thing to do. It was a NADAC trial, and Stacy Peardot-Goudy remembers Hawkeye as the dog that made her laugh so hard in the ring. He ran in and out of a tunnel so fast that I was still looking for him to come out of the tunnel while he ran his own course without me. Hawkeye By Lisa Barrett Call Name: LB: What was easy about Hawkeye’s agility training? ND: Weave poles. In six weeks he was weaving 12 poles. We used the hand-incollar method. Hawk loves speed, and he figured out single-striding on his own. He is also a great gambling dog because he does not need to be close to me. LB: What were your biggest training challenges? Hawkeye MACH, ADCH, RCH-Bronze, GCH-Bronze, JCH-Bronze, SCH-Bronze, SACH, TM, CGC Peninsula Humane Society & SPCA, San Mateo, California Nancy Damarodas Handler: Adopted From: Titles Earned: ND: All the Goldens we knew were relaxed and calm, and we thought we liked that. As it turned out, Hawkeye would never be described as calm! He was a handful. Leo and I had had dogs before, but we had no idea how to manage this hyperactive young dog. And of course we were living on a boat with no fenced yard. We flunked family pet obedience. We repeated the class three times because of Hawk’s bolting and my inability to train a reliable recall. Two trainers told me I would never be able to have this dog off leash. Hawkeye loved to run, and I was determined to train him to the point that he could be off leash. I went to another school and still had the same problems. Then I saw agility on TV. LB: How did you get started in agility? ND: I saw Nancy Gyes and Rachel Sanders win the USDAA Nationals on TV, and the announcer said they were from San Jose. Agility looked like fun. Since my dog loved to run and jump, I mistakenly thought it would be easy to learn. I searched on the Internet and I found Power Paws Agility and called. I was so naive. On the phone, Jim Basic asked me if my dog had a good recall, March 09 | Clean Run ND: Because he had been chained as a puppy, Hawk would bolt the moment he was free. If he saw food, he would run full-speed away from the course to get anything, from a bagel to a banana. Several times he snatched an entire treat bag from someone’s setup. Once he jumped over a tunnel and out of the ring to grab a paper plate, and he finished the course with the plate in his mouth. He tried to catch a butterfly as he came over the top of an A-frame, and he didn’t touch the down ramp at all. At the Sir Francis Drake show, he jumped out of the ring and into a pond to chase ducks. Another time Hawkeye jumped off the top of the dogwalk for a bowl of chili. He became notorious for his bolting antics. He put on quite a show. I think he ran out of the ring at full speed 27 times before his first qualifying run. I was advised that I should take up a different sport. He is so full of joy that I could never be angry with him. Instead, he has always made me smile. He has a 54" stride and up contacts were not easy. We are in a video used to train AKC judges on up contacts. I tried everything to train those up contacts. I worked on getting a collection stride, almost a stop, before the dogwalk. I also tried stride regulators, and I made special hoops out of clear acrylic. I trained a pawtouch with a mouse pad on the contact. 21 © Bill newcomB

Clean Run Magazine - March 2009

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