Summer 2019 Season Patch

Description

Summer 2019 Season

Dog: Julie (2007 – 2019)
Black Labrador Retriever of Dean Baber, Cleveland, Ohio

Champ: Millersville, Maryland

# of Clubs: 108

# of Teams: 2,031

Complete Season Results
 

Summer 2019 Season Toss & Fetch League Commemorative Patch

On a Saturday in August nine years ago, Mark Vitullo, the K9 Frisbee Toss & Fetch League Commissioner, hosted his first ever disc dog event, a local Skyhoundz competition in Stow, Ohio. Dozens of brand new to disc dog competitors played that day including one of the standouts, a lightening fast, high-jumping black Labrador retriever who made her handler look like a superstar.

This was Julie the lab & Dean Baber’s first disc dog competition and the Team made the podium with ease. It was also the beginning of a K9 Frisbee journey that changed the landscape of NE Ohio disc dogging and impacted the sport worldwide.

Like so many of us after our first taste of event competition, Dean was hooked and immediately addicted to the sport. But Dean is a little different than many of us, maybe a little obsessive, and he took his new found passion to the next level and started hosting his own events all through the Cleveland area, all the while showcasing his kind, gentle Julie with her mad frisbee skills.

It wasn’t long thereafter that Dean began lobbying to start a disc dog club in NE Ohio and Ohio Disc Dogs was born in 2012 – with maybe 10 regular members. Dean continued hosting multiple competitions every year and, in between, he and Julie traveled the country to compete and rack up hardware.

But 15 to 20 weekends of K9 Frisbee competition a year wasn’t enough for Dean (he’s obsessive, remember?). He needed something to do during the week and started an intramural Ohio Disc Dog league competition format where the club got together for six or eight consecutive Wednesday nights in the Spring, Summer and Fall.

With this League format, Ohio Disc Dogs grew and by 2015 had become one of the larger disc dog Clubs in the country. In the Fall of that year, the Club challenged the Disc Dogs of Michigan to a competition using the weekly league format. Led by Julie & Dean, Ohio Disc Dogs won that match-up and the Worldwide K9 Frisbee Toss & Fetch League was born.

As the years passed, like all great dogs Julie slowed but never completely retired from playing and greeting competitors and spectators at local NE Ohio events. Her favorite place to play was under the lighthouse at Fairport Harbor Park on the shores of Lake Erie. Earlier this year, cancer took Julie at the age of 12 ending a disc dog partnership that truly changed the world.

As Worldwide K9 Frisbee Toss & Fetch League prepares for the 2019 Summer Season that begins June 8, we’re proud to reveal this commemorative patch that pays tribute to that amazing black lab that helped start it all.

Fly high Julie – gone but never forgotten.