First Lesson
Written by outoforbit
After I lost my heart-dog, I tried going for walks alone. I hated every second of it, as it felt so unnatural. I did it though. I biked, swam, and ran for a year and a half, mostly alone. I was testing myself. I wanted to see if, after having lived all my life with between one and five dogs in my home, I was meant to be a non-dog owning individual.
Susan & Orbit at Canine New England in Massachusetts
About a month later, I met a dog who would change my life. I was so impressed with this dog’s athleticism, comprehension, and the list went on.
It was as if I got caught in going through life’s motions and needed time to be all alone. Newly single, dogless, childless by design, and in a good professional space, I decided to keep a list of the things I could do by not owning a dog.
My entries included:
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Going out for the evening and returning whenever I wanted
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Leaving the door of the house wide open as if I lived in a barn
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Placing grocery bags on the floor upon entering the house (hey, sometimes it happens)
First Road Trip
I began to take note each time I identified ways I’d altered my existence to accommodate a dog(s). I shared my list with friends on social media. I had, of course, surrounded myself with people who all loved dogs. You can imagine how well received this was.
Overall, the general consensus was “That’s depressing!”
I pressed on and thought, That’s definitely one way to look at it. I really felt I was paying tribute to the dog I’d loved and lost. Albeit unconventional, it was helping me take inventory of my life. I also thought, When have I ever been one to follow the herd?
Oddly, in 2018 I bought a sailing rope lead that I found at a seaside shop in Biddeford Pool, ME. One of my close friends said, “Oh Susan, are you getting a dog?”
I replied, “Nope. When I do though, this will be his leash.”
About a month later, I met a dog who would change my life. I was so impressed with this dog’s athleticism, comprehension, and the list went on. I learned the breeder had such success with the breeding that she repeated the cross and those puppies had been born about a month prior, on the day I bought the leash.
Naturally, I followed up with a call to the breeder to find out if she had a boy available. She had one boy and one girl, and she was trying to determine which she was keeping.
One month after that I met my new puppy, whose name at the time was Solar. Upon adopting him, I renamed him Orbit (also, Orbs, Orbilicious, etc.). He was the largest, fluffiest puppy in the litter.
First Road Trip!
Cape Elizabeth, Maine
A few weeks after turning my mellow life upside down with a puppy, I needed to travel for work, which meant Orbs needed to be trained to be in a carrier. We’d already been exploring downtown Portland, Maine, the ferry, the jetport and other places. The trip was a huge success, and I was seeing so much potential in this puppy.
I was bodybuilding at the time, and I decided to throw Orb’s hat in the ring for some modeling. I learned he is a natural. That’s sweet! I thought. We trained more and more until he was asked to model for L.L. Bean. It went incredibly well. We trained different areas and gained momentum with Orbit’s early success.
I found a woman in Walpole, MA, whom I knew years ago from Dog Sports. She was teaching introduction to Disc-Dog, a frisbee sport for dogs. I decided Orb and I should take the class. As you can imagine, Orbit had a blast and I really enjoyed learning a new sport. I needed to learn to throw plastic, and he needed to learn to track and catch plastic. If we were lucky, we could design routines and do freestyle. I loved it so much, I said I’d do it naked!
Orbit, First Hike
Now, I had zero knowledge of the competitions, the sport itself, or the mountain of knowledge that would need to be gained to perform or compete. I did know how it made me feel. That is, how happy my dog looked while doing it, how progress could easily be seen, how we connected as a team, and the way our days seemed filled with more fun and play than structure and demands.
We structured our training sessions around fun and games to achieve our progress. I continued to work and body build while training Orbit to model, do obedience, and perform frisbee fun tricks through play. When we went on hikes we worked on stamina, recalls, and external stimulation.
We continued like this for two years. After having performed in Orbit’s first few shows, we were both ready for something more. In 2021 I purchased a forty-foot fifth wheel where I would plan to work from my RV, train Orbit on the road, and live my life learning more about this new-found sport of Disc-Dog!
I found opportunities to train Orbit under athletes and coaches who have been playing the sport of Disc Dog for many years with a lot of success. I traveled to some of
the hot-bed areas in the US for performing and competing. Orbit was given more opportunities to model and then compete.
In 2022, after qualifying for the Skyhoundz World Championship, Orbit was diagnosed with medial shoulder instability. This meant I would need to choose between surgery or rest and rehabilitation. There would be no opportunity to perform and compete at the Skyhoundz competition that year.
Orbit and I spent many hours of the year 2023 driving back and forth to rehab, swimming, and renovating the fifth wheel. During the time spent in our unplanned and extended offseason, we managed to travel out west for some bucket-list hiking so he could gain his sea legs back.
York Beach, Maine
Unfortunately I got sick with what I later learned was giardia! Poor Orb didn’t get to run and play as much as we’d hoped.
When people say to me, “Why do you keep on doing this?” I say, “Because I love my dog, I love frisbee, and I love creating days that offer me opportunities to perform, learn, and share him with the world.”
This is why I want to share my journey of how I learned to haul and maintain my RV, as well as the struggles you face when living this way. The trade off? That I could be closer to events and opportunities.
This year I will be filming a documentary on what it takes to do these things: Be a professional and keep it all together from a forty-foot rig; raise a puppy, train a dog to be a model and athlete, and what the Orbit-lifestyle on the road is all about; how I get Wi-Fi and healthcare and mail; and of course, trying to qualify for the Skyhoundz World
Championship again this year! I’ll cover everything from learning to throw a frisbee to creating a routine that will hopefully win us the Novice Crown!
Follow the journey here on OutofOrbitBC.com.
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