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In Memoriam - Our Best Boy

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If you have ever watched the TV show How I Met Your Mother, you know Ted Mosby as a sweet, doofy guy who says "I love you" to girls on the first date. Mosby more than lives up to that description of his namesake! Mosby has never met a person that he didn't fall immediately in love with; young, old, male, female - it doesn't matter to Mo! He adores other dogs, and lives with 2 other intact males and an intact female. He naturally greets puppies gently, getting down on the ground to their level and rolling on his side or back to play.

 

Mosby is the dog that introduced my husband and I to the world of competitive dog sports; before Mosby, we had never trained a dog before, not even in basic "pet" manners. At the time we got Mosby, we were living in a condo. We had no intentions of competing or trialing; we were just looking for a loving, calm family pet. In discussing this with Mosby's breeder, she assured us that there would likely be a puppy or two that would fit the description of what we were after. We did, ultimately, get exactly what we were looking for. As a baby puppy, Mosby was calm, sweet, and easy. He slept through the night, housebroke quickly, never destroyed anything, and was happy to just lay atop our feet all day. 

 

When Mosby was around 8 months old, my husband was flipping through the TV channels and came across a dock diving event where the dogs ran down a 40 foot dock to leap into a pool and catch a toy. The dog that jumped the furthest won the competition. He thought it looked like fun, and with a little more research we found a place not far from us that had a pool and dock set-up for dogs to go dock diving. Little Mosby was a natural! It didn't take long for my husband to get hooked on the sport, and we ended up entering our first DockDogs competition when Mosby was 11 months old. He didn't do too bad, jumping over 16' at his first event.  Over the next couple years, Mosby would only get better and better. During the 2013 DockDogs season (when Mosby was just a year old) he became the #2 ranked Golden Retriever. During the 2014 DockDogs season (when Mosby was just 2 years old) he was the #3 ranked Golden Retriever. His dock diving personal bests are:

 

Best Big Air Jump - 25′4″

Best Speed Retrieve Swim - 6.32 seconds

Best Extreme Vertical Grab - 6′4″

 

He was invited to the 2013 DockDogs World Championships in both Big Air and Extreme Vertical, where he competed and made finals in his Extreme Vertical division. For the 2014 DockDogs World Championships, he earned an invite in every single discipline - Big Air, Speed Retrieve, Extreme Vertical, and Iron Dog - and he had a blast competing in Dubuque, Iowa for the second year in a row.  He also earned his AKC North American Diving Dogs DM title on 8/23/2014 (he also has 2 elite jumps on record with NADD, but we've since fallen out of the dock diving game and never pursued finishing the title; he was Elite titled in the DockDogs venue with a Super Elite jump recorded). He competed at the Eukanuba NADD Championships in Orlando, FL in December 2014 where he made finals.

 

We loved training and competing with Mosby so much that we started to look for other venues to get involved in. A friend suggested a new, growing sport called K9 Nosework. The premise sounded cool:  you train your dog the same way people train bomb and drug sniffing dogs, except you train your dogs to find different essential oils to take away the dangerous aspect. We found a local class right around the time Mosby was a year old and began training. Mosby earned his K9 Nosework NW1 title on 12/14/2012 with 4th place overall and his NW2 title on 4/6/2014. For his NW2 title, he received 1st place overall and the “Pronounced” designation, as well as 1st place in the container search and 3rd place in the vehicle search

 

By early 2014, my husband and I now had 3 dogs (2 golden retrievers and an Australian shepherd) and were starting to consider getting involved in more dog sports and our local golden retriever club (the Potomac Valley Golden Retriever Club). Dock diving and nose work were a lot of fun, but we wanted to do more. We decided to brush up Mosby on his obedience and began taking rally classes with him and the other boys. Mosby passed his CGC on 4/13/2014, and then began competing in World Cynosport Rally. He earned his RL1 rally obedience title on 8/30/2014 with two 1st place runs and one 3rd place run, and received an Award of Excellence. He also had one 1st place run towards his RL2 title, but ultimately, my husband and I decided we didn't care too much for rally and would rather put our money and training efforts elsewhere.

 

During the summer of 2014, my husband and I learned about another new sport called Barn Hunt. Since Mosby enjoyed K9 Nosework so much, Barn Hunt sounded like a fun thing to try. With basically no training, Mosby easily passed his RATI instinct test, and earned his AKC Barn Hunt RATN title on 9/21/2014 with one 2nd place run and two 3rd place runs.

 

But it was in late summer of 2014 when things took a turn. Through some convincing, we signed our younger golden (Amos) up for the PVGRC beginner field class. We didn't sign up Mosby because it was only one dog per PVGRC member, and seeing as how Mosby was older, we weren't sure what he would do in the field. Amos attended the 8 week class and was a little superstar, so we decided to try and pursue training for hunt tests with the little guy. We began driving to a weekly training group made up of women we met in the PVGRC training class, and also started attending the training days of the local retriever clubs. My husband and I loved being back outside with the dogs (one of the main reasons we enjoyed dock diving so much), and more importantly, we LOVED seeing our dog do what he was bred to do. Since it started to look like we may get serious with training Amos in the field, we figured we should bring Mosby along to a training day to see how things go. If we were already driving around to train one dog, might as well train the other!

 

Mosby began training for field work in mid-August 2014 (he was less than 1 month shy of his 3rd birthday, and he never even saw a bird or mark before then) and passed his first JH test less than two months later on 10/4/2014. He earned his JH title on 12/20/2014. We didn't really have any plans of going further with Mosby, but he loved bumpers and birds and retrieving so much, it seemed like it would be a shame to have him stop playing in the field. What ended up happening is we followed a force fetch and transition program with our (at the time) rowdy teenage puppy, Amos. Mosby, on the other hand, mostly just got fun bumpers and back piles. We did not take the time to properly train Mosby or put a foundation on him, rather we just let him come along and decided to see what he would do.

 

In the fall of 2015, we found a larger field to work the boys in, and a pond to use so they could have more regular water work (until this point, the majority of our handling training was done in the 80' x 40' postage stamp backyard of our first house). Mosby was having a blast in the field, and was able to get his first two Senior hunt test passes in November 2015 despite not following a program or receiving the thorough training that our other dog did (Mosby was never force fetched). He also passed his WCX in October 2015. He is completely amateur owner trained and handled; we have never worked with or trained with a pro, and my husband and I both work full-time.

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On May 21, 2016, Mosby passed his 4th senior hunt test, making him a Senior Hunter! We are so proud of this dog for overcoming his lack of a foundation and late start to training and achieving this accomplishment.

 

About the same time that we first introduced him to field work, we took 3 year old Mosby to his first ever foundation agility class. What were my husband and I thinking trying to learn two new sports at the same time!? There is so much for the person to learn, let alone the dog. Agility became a fun sport to play whenever we weren't already booked with field training (or concerts or vacations - Brian and I have a pretty full calendar!). We entered our first trial in the fall of 2015 (when Mosby was 4 years old), and just casually entered a trial here or there when we had time. Mosby earned his NA going 3-for-3 and NF going 3-for-3. He also quickly earned his NAJ and OA before the end of 2015.

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As of the end of 2016, Mosby has morphed into a fantastic agility dog. With minimal training and trialing, Mo began racking up Qs for his Open, Excellent, and Master titles and ended the year with QQs and MACH points to his name (although it certainly is looking like he will have the points he needs LONG before he gets those 20 QQs). We're looking forward to seeing what he can accomplish in 2017; I swear this dog gets faster every trial!

 

Mosby earned his CCA in the spring of 2015, with judges having very nice things to say about his head, topline (Mosby has a strong topline that is level both stacked and moving), rear, and sweet disposition. He is short coupled, and has a correctly textured wash-n-go coat. He is our favorite dog to take out and about; Mosby loves coming with us to vineyards and breweries, or out to eat at restaurants where he can dine on the patio. He is also the most amazing house dog anyone could ever want. Mosby seriously naps all day long! There are still times when I go up to him and nudge him with my foot to make sure he is still alive. But all you have to do to get him up and moving is ask him if he wants to play - then he becomes a happy little wild child. Nothing makes him happier than chasing a jolly ball throughout the yard or wrestling with the other dogs or heading outside for a training session. In our mind, Mosby embodies the definition of a perfect off-switch.

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EXCITING UPDATE! On 10/26/2019, Mosby became our very first MACH! We are so proud of this boy and how far he has come!