The joy in Flight?

[ucci]

Hard to give this one an appropriate name. Hang over shots from a recent Expo here at Seymour. Never seen this before. The dogs have to run over a short course, leaping hurdles on the way, retrieve a tennis ball from a holder and then return over the same hurdles to the vociferous vocal encouragement of their owners. It was a timed trial and I guess the fastest time won the event. The dogs seemed to really get into it and enjoy it, almost as much as their frenetic owners. I watched a couple of run throughs and decided it was a boring waste of time on the dogs' behalf; but maybe it was of some therapeutic use to their owners who were giving their lungs and vocal chords a pretty thorough work out, whilst madly leaping around like demented whirling dervishes on steroids, back behind the starting line.
I did ponder on what would be the response of either of our two Jack Russells, Billy and Possum, were I to dare suggest that they do a mad cap dash over some hurdles to grab a tennis ball from a box and bring back to me.
"You have to be kidding, right? You want that tennis ball? Then go and get it yourself! "
As you may gather, our two JR's are rather spoiled, well pampered and put their personal comfort at the highest level of priority.
Thanks for viewing and for any comments you may care to make in cc. And I hope my little story was not overly long and too tedious.

[IzzieK]

Hey Ken...when I was training dogs for agility competitions, the Jack Russells in the group always win hands down...they can jump higher too. JRs are very versatile dogs. Billy and Possum will be easy to train especially in your place where you have a huge space to put these kind of barrier jumps. It is fun for the dogs and fun for the owners too. My rottweiler at the time, Lennix, was a huge dog compare to a JR so you can just imagine why he has collected quite a number of ribbons in his time.

Anyway, all good shots. I like #1 for the intensity of the action and the pose...and the last one for the exposure...

[Downrigger]

Fun shots, Ken, and great comments! I think getting focus right must have been a challenge with these. The first is a good example of how well you did this.

[Shadowman]

Nice efforts, were you working on panning while shooting these?

[ucci]

Nice efforts, were you working on panning while shooting these?

Panning? Panning? "Sorry sir, there there ain't no gold in that there creek worth panning for," as they say!
But to be serious for once. I have to tell you that at my age I am such, in terms of stability on my 'plates of meat,'were I to try panning a shot the most likely end result would be a panning shot of the sky, as I went base over apex, which for my fellow aussies translates as A over T!
I got it by focusing on the hurdle whilst the dog approached and as it launched itself into outer space I just fired off multiple shots and kept the one which was not the worst of the bunch. Sometimes serendipitous good fortune favours the inept in these endeavours.
Thank you all for viewing and your comments on what were really unplanned shots of opportunity, taken as I was just meandering past this little event, looking at the show's various exhibits. And I leave with the promise that all of you have seen more than enough from me for a while. And so I am going to sit on the sidelines bench for a bit and just enjoy viewing the postings of others.

[wilgk]

Ken, they are indeed fun!
But the absolute treasure of this thread is the fact that panning or not, you have uncovered gold...

"serendipitous good fortune favours the inept"

Absolute Gold! Right there.

[GBO25]

What a series and although it's not the sharpest tack in the tin the second one is my stand out favourite. Loooove those ears.

[Stagecoach]

Enjoyable set Ken, photography should be about fun and looking at the ears and more noticeable the eyes of No 2 I had a good laugh.

[NorthernFocus]

I've never seen that event before. But they now have many different dog sports. The second looks more like your ss dropped off than OOF. But that one is the cutest pup.

[Marie Hass]

It is called "fly ball".

Marie