Ziti’s Welcome Back Card from the Gated Dock (left) and smiling on a bench at a park (right)
As early as 3 months after her back surgery, Ziti started getting the zoomies and we started taking her to the park for a few hours to dissipate the excess energy. About 5 months after surgery, her need for something to do reached a point that we signed her up for a CPE Speedway trial at ARF in July. Speedway is fairly low impact (no jumps or weaves) so many people bring their older dogs to Speedway when they get too old to do agility. Ziti entered 7 events and came away with 7 ribbons (2 first, 2 second, 2 third, and 1 fourth place) so she obviously still has the drive! Click here for a video of her last Slingshot run. In September, we took her to a FastCAT event at the Gated Dock, where she got her start in this event. She ran the 100-yard dash in about 8.5 seconds, which is slow for her but would put her in the top 10 nationwide. She may just need more practice to figure out just how fast she can run and still have control over her rear legs. As a reward for having a great run, we took Ziti to a park in Crawford County.