Thank you to the WT Gear Sponsors!

How awesome! We have sponsors for all of our WT Gear Giveaway prizes!


The Softshell Jacket is sponsored by Aqua Dogs Rehabilitation in New Jersey.

The Duffel Bag is sponsored by Paw Parade located in Washington. Paw Parade is a new online store that will be launching soon!

BOTH Sports shirts were donated by Jan DeMello of Hob Nob Border Collies in Washington.

And BOTH Baseball caps shirts were also donated by Jan DeMello of Hob Nob Border Collies

Jan gave a very generous donation of $200 and said she was donating $100 for each Hob Nob on the 2010 world team, referring to Icon and Presto of course. :)

The US Agility Team has a blog!

There's not much action there yet, but I'm sure there will be!  I plan on posting there about our Team Practices.  I just need to find some time...

USA Agility Team Blog

And THANK YOU to everyone who has donated and received tickets for the US WT Giveaway so far! The response has been amazing! More on that later too :)

***2010 USA Agility World Team Gear Giveaway***

The 2010 USA Agility World Team is excited to announce that we are having a 2010 USA Agility World Team Gear Giveaway this year! Anyone can get a ticket, you don't need to buy or donate anything!

However, we are asking for people to support the USA Agility Team with donations. Half the donations will go towards our hard working Assistant Team Coach, Kathie Leggett, who travels to WT Practices and the World Championships on her own dime. The WT could not function without everything that Kathie does. The other half of the donations will go to the AKC/USA Agility World Team, which will helps to pay for practices, amongst all of the other costs involved in sending WT members to Germany.  We are hoping to have 2 practices in Germany on the actual competition surface, which is an interesting sandy mixture.  This will allow us to kick some European butt, er,  I mean show the world what great sportsmanship USA has!

Now, back to the exciting part... The Giveaway!

The drawing will be held at the USA Supporter Dinner in Germany on Sept 29th. Agility Vision has graciously offered to record the drawing and post it to their website so you can watch it happen and see if you win (it won't be live-streamed, but will be uploaded soon after)!

See your local World Team Member for your Giveaway ticket.  If you don't have a local WT Member near you, you can email your favorite one, or email me at c.fosty at comcast dot net.  And PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE consider donating at the same time. Any amount can help, even $1!

So what are we giving away? Really cool team gear with the USA Agility Team logo embroidered on it!  This logo is generally reserved for ONLY World Team members, so it's a pretty cool to own one!

Please let me know if you or your company is willing to donate the cost of a giveaway prize (contact me for expected costs.)  You will be publicly thanked during the giveaway and any way we can before!

(note: all prizes will be purchased after the drawing so we can get the correct size and style - mens/womens - from the Giveaway winners) 

1st Prize

A Softshell Jacket in Red or Blue! 

(men's style available)

2nd Prize

A Duffel Bag in Red or Blue!

3rd and 4th Prize (two will be given away)

A Sports Shirt in Red or Blue!

(men's style available)

5th and 6th Prize (two will be given away)

A Baseball Cap in Red or Blue!





Your 2010 USA Agility World Team thanks you!

Rammy does AKC

We went to one day of an AKC trial on Saturday. We didn't have many Q's and I even ran Shadow, so I had lots of chances! But Apollo won 24" standard, which made my day. I know how awesome Apollo is of course, but I love it when he shows the world :)

My camera battery died so I didn't get any runs on tape but thankfully Greg and Tammy got Rammy's runs. No Q's, a bar and a refusal in Exc A JWW and 2 refusals in Open Std. That's ok though, our goal is just to make trialing fun right now and I think Rammy would say, "Mission Accomplished". It sure would be nice to get that last Open Std leg though...

Rammy Std


Rammy JWW

An uncanny resemblance

Am I gifted, or what? And to think people say I'm not artistic....



(imagine the ball is a tongue - this was the best profile pic I could find, he's always looking at me!)

"Dear Channan, why don't you ever have photos of your dogs anymore?"

I had an email from a friend asking me why I don't take photos of my dogs so much anymore. I guess I used to be more prolific when it came to photos of my boys.

There is a valid reason for my laziness, er, I mean lack of photos. In a nutshell the reason is simple. It's for the safety of my dogs.

Lets take tonight for example. Icon and Rampage were laying just outside in an very cute way. So of course I grab my camera to take a photo.

As soon as I touch the camera the dogs move from their very cute positions to look at me. It's was sad they lost the real cuteness, but I told them to stay and was hoping I could still get a kind of cute photo. However, even from the first photo I took you can see that trouble is brewing.

Both of the boys know I have the camera. Icon is already whining in the photo but is too well behaved to move and Rampage knows that Icon's about to go nuts with the camera there.


And then chaos ensues.



Icon runs towards the camera and smashes his head against the lens. Poor guy, he thinks the camera attacked him (maybe taking photos will be easier now!) Then Rampage does his little "*Woof-woof* I'm running around with a toy *woof-woof* in my mouth not looking *woof-woof* where I'm going *woof-woof*" routine and takes out a jump with his shoulder, yelps and comes up limping. He seems fine now, but it was scary!

And of course after that I can't get a photo to save my life.


So there you go. That is why I don't have many photos of my dogs anymore.

More about Prague

On Wednesday morning after we dropped the dogs off at the hotel we set out again on our sightseeing. We went to the Jewish Quarter which housed the ceremonial hall, cemetery and synagogues.

We went through the ceremonial hall


Marcy did some shopping


We saw the Jewish cemetery which had over 20000 tombstones and estimated >100000 graves.


We also went to a bunch of Jewish Synagogues but we weren't allowed to take photos inside. They had a lot of interesting artifacts from around the war but the most amazing thing we saw were pictures rescued from Terezin, the place where the Jewish citizens of CZ were sent during the war. The pictures were mostly by children and showed images of life in Terezin. It was very moving. For each picture there was a note saying whether the artist survived or not. Many Jews died there although Terezen was not comparable to places like Auschwitz.

Then (on a happier note) we went for lunch. There was a No Stress restaurant.


But we decided on the Stressful one. But it was a great choice, they had good food. This was my favorite meal in CZ.


Even better with fries!
(photo by Marcy)

We found a door the perfect size for Marcy at the astronomical clock. Marcy wanted to get a picture of my by the door but I wasn't being a good sport :)




Oh, look! We're back at Wenceslas Square. How did that happen?


We were very lucky that I had my iPhone with me because we used it constantly to find out where we were and how to get where we were going.

Interesting and depressing mural about how war and rebuild will be going on for infinity.


We ended the day having dinner at a pizza place that was really good! It was right close to our hotel and had good reviews online. I meant to add a review of my own after our meal but forgot. I will get to that once I remember the name of the place.