It is with great pleasure that TBDC would like to announce an extremely promising addition to our team. It all started when I tried to contact some local rescues and see if I could help by working with and then showing any Frisbee potential candidates at the competitions. I figured this would give me good knowledge in how to teach different dogs to do different things as well as get some potential new stars in front of the people who would be able to use them the most.

I started by posting to the CFDDC list on yahoo and while it did generate some discussions I didn’t get any real leads on dogs. It was either Sarah or Kat who first told me to speak to Kim Litz and as it turned out Kim and I were both busy if we were ever at the same event. Kat pointed out a herding trial that was about 15 minutes from my house one day and we ran into Kim there. She showed me “Fluffy” and we had a very nice chat and told me to get in touch with Joanne Brodaw and ask her about Kota. They had sent out an email with a video and I had seen she could catch a Frisbee already so I was excited and told her I would. I asked if she thought Joanne would be receptive to me showing her at events and to be honest by her response I thought there was no way I was ever going to get a dog to work with … but I was determined.

Ok ... So I guess it was a bit windy at the Quad this year. It literally crushed one of my tents. I had set up the one I got at Dick's Sporting goods. It's a 10 x 10 pop-up type with legs that are at an angle ... not the straight up and down ones like the Firstup ones you get at walmart. I thought the angled legs might give me a better base to work with in these windy conditions. I anchored that thing down with nice spikes but it was stlil no match for the wind and I had to hold it from time to time as the gusts got REALLY bad. Finally I noticed some others had lowered just the back legs and kept the front legs in there top position creating an angled effect and effectively blocking the majority of the wind. I didn't have to hold it anymore as the wind was coming from the back and pushing the roof down .... so hard I noticed the bottom brace looked as if it could buckle and as I went to go get a bungee to tie it back for support I saw it give way. In haste I pulled bandit's crate right under the buckled area and it held the tent up for the remainder of the day. The Cross Brace bar had bent but not broken but the whole back wall was really flimsy now so I thought I'd have to toss it .... that was till I was walking around Home Depot and thought of a way to fix it.

At first I bought a 3 foot piece of Steele and a couple of metal screw clamps thinking I could cut the metal into two pieces and create a splint, clamp it on either end see if it would hold. The Parts were like $5 and I thought it would be better than asking the budget committee for a new tent. Anyway, I get this stuff home and it takes me a couple of weeks to actually pull it all out and play around with it and I realized I could make the repair and you really wouldn't notice it at all. We're already like the hillbilly Disc Doggers in the group and I figured it would be better if I didn't show up with a tent held together by beer cans and duct tape right ?