Dog Dayz of Summer

The 3rd annual Dog Dayz of Summer event was held this past Saturday at the Kittitas County Farmer's Market. It was sponsored by the Kittitas Valley K-9's Dog Club and the Kittitas County Farmer's Market. It was a doggone good time for canines and their humans and its success was due to the many hard-working volunteers, the Farmer's Market vendors who donated fantastic prizes for the contests, Rob Lowry who was a superb and entertaining announcer, and of course all the spectators who cheered on the competing canines! In addition to those that were just mentioned, a huge thanks also goes out to Sun Dogs Agility and the Ellensburg Police Department and Corporal Ray Cedeno and Reno! Thanks to everyone who helped out at this year's event!

To see photos of the event, please click on the picture above.

Area Dog Events

The KVK9s are sponsoring a couple of great dog events this summer. Dog Dayz is August 15 at the Kittitas County Farmer's Market. We'll have fun stuff for kids to do, including a kid/dog costume contest. You can show off your pets best tricks, enter the Human/Dog lookalike contest, participate in Musical Chairs, Recall Relays and more. We'll do an Agility Demo and the Police K9s will show their stuff. Enter any of the events by showing up at the market the day of the event. All the events are free and the goal is to get people and their friendly dogs out for a day of fun. Registrations start at 8AM, and fun starts at 10AM.

We're also putting on a 5K dog walk/run up at Suncadia. This event will be September 12, and will wind through the beautiful Suncadia landscape. Stay tuned here for more on this fun activity!!

Canine Good Citizen Training

On Sunday, we held our regular club meeting at a local park and practiced for the Canine Good Citizen (CGC) test. The weather was nice, the dogs did great, and the dogs even got to meet some kids who were playing at the park and skateboarding which was an authentic learning experience for them. :)

Group sit-stay practice

Georgie meets a new friend

Lilly sits pretty like always

Nala practices her stay while Deja comes when called


After practice, a brief modeling session followed. That's right, the dogs are also in training to become America's next top dog model. Their work is endless! ;) To see the dog model photos click here.

First Annual Yard Sale

On Saturday April 18th the club held its first Annual Yard Sale. Members donated items from kitchen ware, to rototillers, car racks to beany babies. We held it inside the training center at Waggin' Tails Ranch. The day was beautiful and "yardies" came out in droves. We managed to sell all the large ticket items, and most of the smaller stuff too. A Huge Success! We'll use part of the money to fund other group activities and the rest will got toward helping the Ellensburg Animal Shelter care for their critters.
Looking forward to next year's event!!

It's Official...

we have a blog and this is our first post! These pictures are just to give you an idea of a couple of things that we have been doing over the past few months. First, we have been participating in a class called Agility Foundations. We started out with some crate games to get our dogs used to going in and out of the crate and we also worked on having them stay in the crate without moving or sticking any body parts (muzzles or paws) out before we gave them the signal. This helps with that "rock solid" stay which is especially important in agility as the time begins when the dog first moves. :) That being said, not all of the club members compete in agility with their dogs; however, this work not only stimulates the dog but the skills they are learning carry over into everyday activities.

We have also been working on shaping behavior. Rather than tell or show our dogs what to do, we wait for the behavior we want then we praise them and give them a treat. Some people use clickers so they will first click and then treat. The desired behavior above was to be on the towel which Sully has figured out!

And of course, with every training session comes lots of treats and fun! Look at them all waiting their turn so nicely! :)