Frisbee pup

A dog by the name of Ashley Whippet started it all. He was the Babe Ruth, Michael Jordan, and Wayne Gretsky of the Frisbee dog world. Ashley was, logically enough, a Whippet.

He was born in 1971 and was a constant companion of an Ohio State student, Alex Stein. In August, 1974 Alex sneaked Ashley into Dodger Stadium where a nationally televised game was being played and at the bottom of the 8th inning they jumped the fence, ran on the field and launched into a gorilla Frisbee routine. The crowd loved it. Ashley ran across the field at 35 mph and leaped nine feet in the air to grab the Frisbee.

The game was stopped and even the announcer reported a play by play of the amazing dog routine. Unfortunately after performing for about eight minutes, Alex was arrested for trespassing and fined $250.
 
The following year Stein helped organize the first Frisbee Dog World Championship which took place alongside the human championships held at the Rose Bowl. Stein and Ashley won the first three championships. In the early 80’s it was renamed the Ashley Whippet Invitational (AWI) in honor of Ashley who later died in 1985 at the age of 14.

Since that time, Freestyle Frisbee has become one of the most competitive and entertaining events at any dog event challenge. After watching videos like THIS ONE and THIS ONE, Davey and I knew that we wanted a dog who could play with us with that kind of fun intensity. With that in mind, we hunted out our Border Collie breeder and of course ended up with our little Jazz. We weren’t exactly sure when we could start Frisbee training with Jazz, but then I stumbled upon THIS VIDEO and figured we could start as early as we wanted.

So, a few weeks ago we bought Jazz his first four discs at for 99 cents a piece (thanks PetSmart!). At first he had no idea what to think of the discs and all he wanted to do was lick the sides of them. Needless to say, we were a little concerned that we had ended up with the one Border Collie in the world who wouldn’t want to play Frisbee. But, after about 30 minutes of sniffing, licking, chewing and chasing, Jazz caught on and hasn’t been without a Frisbee since. We pick up the Frisbees from his toy box and as soon as he sees them, he just goes CRAZY! We are officially the proud parents of a Frisbee pup!

Here’s some video of Jazz and Davey playing Frisbee in our backyard. Jazz isn’t old enough to jump yet (we have to wait until he is a year old in order to give all his bones, muscles and ligaments plenty of time to develop) so for now he enjoys running down the discs and dragging them across the yard back to us. Not only is this great exercise for him, but he also makes great entertainment for our other child, ‘Rini (who still tolerates a dog more than a cat should).