New State Champions get published!

Yep! That's Danny with a beauty of a new trophy! He and Guinan took 3rd in freestyle and 1st in distance this last weekend at the Indiana State Championships in Delphi, IN. These scores combined earned him the top ranking and made them the new Indiana State Champions!!!

In other disc-dog news...Danny and Guinan have an article about them in the local paper today (The South Bend Tribune).
The article follows (since it would only be on their website for a few days):
Article published Aug 16, 2006

BORDER COLLIE IS ONE HIGH-FLYING POOCH!

BILL MOOR
Tribune Columnist

Danny Eggleston, a longtime Ultimate Frisbee competitor, was tossing one of his discs up in the air in his living room when he thought a rocket had gone off in his house.

Guinan, his 10-week-old border collie pup, tried to jump over the coffee table to down the disc.

"Just 10 weeks old," Danny says. "I think at that point I knew I might have a pretty good disc dog competitor."

Oh, yeah.

Guinan, a girl and now 2 1/2, and Danny, a computer programmer at Manhattan Associates in Mishawaka, just won the overall title at the Disc Dog Indiana state championships over the weekend in Delphi.A few weeks earlier at a 12-state regional competition in New Castle, they won four titles ... set a world record in the time trial ... and qualified for three events at the Hyperflight Skyhoundz World Championships in Atlanta.

Like their Frisbees, they are flying high right now.

"I'm looking forward to seeing how well we can do at Worlds," says Danny, 29, a Jimtown native.

What can stop them from doing well?

"Well, maybe me," Danny says. "Last year at the regional, I threw a disc right into the ground."Guinan still loved him.

"I had 365 days to think about that one," he says.

And both he and Guinan have risen to the occasion -- and often above the competition -- ever since.But something else could ground them, too.

The Worlds are scheduled for Sept. 23-24, and Danny and his wife, Jamie, are expecting their first child on Oct. 6.

"The baby comes first," Danny says.

"I won't be able to go to the Worlds regardless, but I so want Danny and Guinan to go," Jamie says.

Like her hubby and their disc-defying doggie, she needs to go the distance for that to happen."Both Danny and Guinan are high energy, and they really are enjoyable to watch," says Jamie who usually is cheering from the sidelines with their other dog, a Jack Russell terrier named Frodo.

They both have a little ham in them, too.

They got a head start on most rookies last year when well-known disc dog showman Bill Camp, of Niles, mentored them and even took them with him to perform at a couple halftimes at NFL football games.

"Bill was really helpful," Danny says. "In fact, the whole disc dog culture is that of cooperation and friendliness. It's like people are taken aback when someone even yells at their dog."

That can cause a little bit of a problem for Danny."It seems the louder I am, the faster Guinan runs," he says.

And Guinan is about as quick as a dog gets.

When they took first place in the time trial event at the regional in New Castle, Guinan set a world record by catching and retrieving two 20-yard-plus throws in 14.78 seconds.

No performance enhancement drugs, either. Just a few doggie power bars called Zukes.

At the Worlds, Danny and Guinan will compete in three events -- distance and accuracy in which dogs catch as many discs as they can in 60 seconds along with the freestyle and team freestyle competitions (with fellow competitor Christina Curtis, of Indianapolis) in which they do a 90-second routine of throws and vaults and other acrobatic stuff."We usually start out with Guinan and me doing a conga line in the freestyle event," Danny says.

They are quite a pair and practice in their Osceola neighborhood almost every night.

"If I had to break it down, I would say that Guinan is about 60 percent of our success with me about 40 percent of it," Danny says.

That breakdown isn't enough to call their act "Guinan and a Guy," but Danny knows he has a special dog.

"She definitely has the knack," he says.The world -- and the Worlds -- await.