Bay Team Cool Canines
From BayTeam
The Cool Club Canines feature is intended to give members an introduction to other club members. It's not an award, but an article about club members, all of whom are cool and interesting! Cool Canines are featured one at a time on our main page. Any Bay Teamer can submit bios (for themselves or others) -- see Cool Canine submissions.
Wendy Vogelgesang and a variety of dogs
Featured August 16, 2010
Lots of you know Bay Team trial regular Wendy Vogelgesang. For the past 12 years, she's been an agility commuter, driving up from Southern California for trials and lessons at Power Paws. She travels in one of the most stylish truck and trailer rigs around. This year, Wendy's Casita trailer has been spending a lot more time parked in the Bay Area, and Wendy became an official member of Bay Team.
Wendy lost her 13 1/2 year old corgi, Zoe, earlier this year to cancer. Zoe began her agility career with Wendy's 10-year-old son, Shane, and they were a fixture on the agility circuit for a long time. Then Wendy's family moved to the beach. After that, he discovered surfing, and girls, and that was it for the agility career. Zoe and Wendy continued on together, though, and Zoe's illustrious career included making the finals at the USDAA Nationals multiple times in Junior Handler, Championship, and Performance.
Wendy currently competes with her super speedy border collie Kicks!, who is so fast she has an exclamation point permanently attached to her name. Wendy's other border collie, Rave, is retired from competing and is enjoying the good life just hanging out and having a good time. And we'll start seeing her teensy, tiny spitfire of a papillon, Zuma, in the ring very soon when she makes her USDAA debut and starts tearing it up in the small dog division.
Wendy is a star student of Nancy Gyes and Laura Manchester Derrett, and is an awesome handler and trainer. When I asked her for some training advice, she said, "I guess my best training advice would be to know your dog, be open to advice and train with someone you trust to guide you and build your confidence and your dog's confidence and never, ever stray far from Power Paws."
Pretty humble advice from someone who does such a great job as Wendy. For more about Wendy her dogs, read on at Team Small Dog.
[LH, LH-p]
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- See Bay Team Cool Canines archive for dozens more Cool Canine teams!
Credits
(Without -p = article by, with -p = photo by):
- [AS]: Angela Sutton
- [EF]: Ellen Finch
- [KB]: Karin Bruce
- [KW]: Kathy Wheelock
- [LH]: Laura Hartwick
- [MW]: Maura Warnecke
- [TC]: Tania Chadwick
