Ambassador Highlight | All About Lucie
My name is Settie and the adventure with my dog, Lucie, began the day after I turned 19. I was a first-year student at Colorado College when I got Lucie and she soon joined me in my dorm room on campus. The dorms weren’t an ideal situation for a very smart puppy brimming with energy, so I quickly enrolled Lucie in training classes. As a new dog parent, I thought classes would be the best way to give Lucie something to do.
Lucie as a puppy in Colorado.
By the time Lucie was two, she had finished numerous training courses including her puppy, intermediate, advanced training, her American Kennel Club Canine Good Citizen, the Advanced Canine Good Citizen, and the Urban Canine Good Citizen. I then enrolled Lucie in therapy training to keep her mentally stimulated as well as give her a job helping others. The classes kept her mentally engaged, so I made it my job to provide her with plenty of exercise.
Hiking quickly became one of our favorite exercises. When we would go on our adventures, I would follow routes with water sources so Lucie could swim and cool off from the heat. I started to bring a frisbee for her because nothing made Lucie happier than jumping off rocks into the water. After some searching, I found a dog park in Park City, Utah with a pond and a dock. On our first outing at the park, she took to jumping off the dock and acted more fearless than I had ever seen her.
After a move to Salt Lake City, I learned that a local facility was hosting a dock diving competition. I thought it would be a fun thing to do with Lucie. We had one training session and signed up for the competition the next day. We were hooked. Lucie did an amazing job with an average distance jump of 20’10”. Knowing how much potential she had, we started to work with a coach every week to prepare for the next event.
During the first weekend in June of this year, we participated in a regional qualifier. A dog needs to place in the top three of their distance categories to get an invitation for regionals. We had completed 8/9 rounds and with one jump left to go in the weekend, Lucie made a new personal best of 24’4”. Although we did not qualify for regionals, Lucie made me so proud for giving it her all and had a wonderful time doing it. Things do not always go as planned; it just means new goals need to be set and mindsets need adjustment.
