Move over, Lance and Larry. This year, at least to the tens of thousands in this country who compete in the canine sport of agility, the most famous owner and super dog in Alaska may be Heidi and Ice.
Heidi Vania of Anchorage and her bullet of a Shetland sheepdog, Ice, were named to the elite 12-member AKC/USA Agility World Team that will compete in the FCI World Championships on Oct. 1-3 in Rieden, Germany.
The event is the Olympics of the sport, in which the handler directs an unleashed dog through an obstacle course in a race for both time and precision.
No Alaska team has ever been invited to compete in the 14 years of the world championships, making Vania's inclusion on the U.S. team sort of like a Jamaican cracking the Top 10 in the Iditarod.
"It's pretty remarkable," said U.S. head coach Nancy Gyes of San Jose, Calif., a seven-time member of the team and a one-time gold medalist. "She's far surpassed anything we could have imagined."
Even Vania shakes her head when she considers the makeup of the U.S. team.
"Lots of them do this full time," said Vania, 50, who works for Cook Inlet Region Inc. "They're the ones who are writing the articles in Clean Run Magazine, making instructional videos. Many of them have their own training centers. They've been on the world team multiple times. They are very serious about this."
ICE WAS BORN TO PLAY
Vania got Ice as a pup six years ago from a breeder who knew the dog was, uh, different.
"He was the kind of dog that most pet owners shouldn't own," Vania said. "He had attitude."
Top breeders know when they've got a dog that breaks the mold. They perform tests to see how each dog behaves when confronted with everything from toys to strange noises and how they relate with siblings. In almost every area, Ice stood out.
"He was independent, very inquisitive, very outgoing -- which is typically not a sheltie trait," Vania said. "Other dogs are more laid back, and breeders will place them with someone who wants to curl up with them on the couch. I was needing a very outgoing dog."
And Ice, a gorgeous specimen with marble coloring and one brown eye and one blue eye, fit the bill.
His fluffy coat makes him look larger, but Ice grew to just 10 pounds as an adult -- about half the size of the average sheltie. But he had everything Vania was looking for in a canine athlete.
"He has so much heart," said Vania. "He loves to run. He loves to work for me, with me, play with me. He is 100 percent attitude, and I have never done anything to diminish it. He came to me with a lot of it, and I just enhanced it."
It doesn't take a dog whisperer to know what makes Ice special. He's wildly happy, and Vania is this dog's best friend.
Among her techniques for maintaining that enthusiasm is Ice's feeding regimen, something that may surprise some dog owners.
All of Ice's meals come from Vania's hands.
"My dogs work for every meal," she said. "I do not bowl feed. They work for breakfast; they work for dinner. If you're asking for a work ethic, you need to put into it what you want out of it. You sure do get another level of commitment from the dog and a different relationship with them."
In competition, that enthusiasm transfers into lightning speed. And more than one photographer has the blurry pictures to prove it.
"He's the whole package," Vania said. "He runs like a big dog; his stride length is just unbelievable. He's a little slow to learn concepts, but once he has them, he has them. He just runs with heart, and when people see him all they can do is smile. He wants to work, run, play, interact. That's what he lives for."
A LONG ROAD FOR AN ALASKAN
To appreciate how far Vania has come, consider how far behind Alaska was when she started.
Agility originated in Europe in the late 1970s but didn't take off in the United States for another decade. Alaska, isolated by geography and weather, was even further behind. Agility is contested outdoors or in covered arenas, never on snow.
Though Alaskans were competing on a small scale by the 1990s, the first AKC agility trial wasn't held in the state until 2001, seven years after the AKC's first event in the Lower 48.
"None of us had any formal training, so it was kind of learn-as-we-go," said Lynda Wilkes-Barber, a longtime instructor at Alyeska Canine Trainers.
Vania said she read every article she could find in national magazines, watched every instructional video and attended every workshop. The breakthrough, she said, was when she decided to travel Outside, something she started doing as often as every six to eight weeks during the winter.
"There are a lot more dogs," Vania said. "But people are great. They adopt any Alaskan who comes down. And if you ask for help, they will help you."
Vania videotaped every run her dogs made, plus those of the top competitors. Then she and other Alaskans scrutinized the tapes to see where they could pick up time.
"Sometimes, we'll see a move and say 'Stop, back that up,' " Vania said of the video analysis. "'What did she do with her feet on that turn?' Then I'll take it home, slow it down and see if I can do it."
At the time, Vania was competing with what she calls her first fast sheltie, Dot, and her improvement in trials drew attention. Sharon Anderson, an AKC representative, attended a trial in Fairbanks and told Vania that she should consider shooting for the U.S. World Team.
"That encouragement got her fired up," said Els Crisafulli, Vania's longtime friend.
If it hadn't already, training soon became part of life.
"The last time my husband and I took a vacation without the dogs -- my God -- it was 15 years ago," Vania said.
She trains every day throughout the year. In the summer, she sets up a mini-course in her backyard for twice-a-day workouts. In winter, she moves the equipment inside.
"We have a single-car garage, and on one side are all my husband's toys," Vania said. "I have a 10x12 (foot) area."
On occasion, she improvises. Before one Outside trial with Dot, Vania learned they were running on a carpeted course -- something her dogs had little experience with.
"I would haul rolls of indoor- outdoor carpeting to church parking lots, trying to acclimate them to that kind of footing. It's terrible. They can't dig in. Both Dottie and Ice slipped on that surface," she said.
Footwork, she discovered, was important for the human half of the team as well, so she hired a personal trainer a couple years ago.
Her efforts led to success. With Dot, Vania twice participated in the U.S. World Team trials, in 2005 as a demonstration team and in 2006 as competitors. The experiences gave Vania a taste of the competition, if not quite the success, she has had with Ice.
"It's incredible to go because of the atmosphere," Vania said. "You've got 70- to 80-some-odd of the best handlers in the U.S. all in one arena competing. You can hear a pin drop."
ROAD TO THE WORLD TEAM
Among a long list of qualifying standards for the world team, Vania and Ice had to achieve 16 perfect runs -- eight each on two types of courses -- in a year's time. And half of those perfect runs had to come on the same day, meaning a perfect morning could be negated by one mistake in the afternoon.
Then they had to compete in the U.S. Nationals in March in Tulsa, Okla., where more than 900 dogs competed, including 167 in Ice's 12-inch-height class.
Ice just missed reaching the finals. He needed five perfect runs and had four. But the showing was good enough to make him a serious threat for the world team at the May trials in St. Paul, Minn. There, Ice was in second place after his first three runs, but two mistakes on the second day knocked him out of the running for the last automatic spot on the world team.
Then it was a three-week waiting game until coaches announced their discretionary selections. On May 24, Vania got the call saying she and Ice had made the team.
"That poor woman probably lost her hearing," said Vania. "I just started screaming."
Ironically, Vania's biggest obstacle -- being from Alaska -- turned out to be a strength in the eyes of the coaches who made the final picks.
"Ice has a little bit of everything," said Gyes, the world team coach. "Being in Alaska, Heidi has a lot to overcome. She has to travel a lot to get to competitions. It shows her commitment, and it shows the dog travels well."
ALASKANS PITCH IN
Since Vania and Ice made the team, the state's agility community has responded in a big way. From Fairbanks to Kenai, fundraisers were held this summer and brought in about $5,000 to support not just Vania but the entire U.S. World Agility Team.
"It's a message to the AKC: 'Hey, we exist here in Alaska,'" Barber- Wilkes said. "It's worth considering Alaskans on the team. We know it's expensive to fly an Alaskan to practices and competition. We want to help out."
Vania said that in all of her travels, she hasn't seen the kind of camaraderie she sees in Alaska.
"It's different here. Everybody cheers for everybody else," she said. "I've been places where people have forgotten it's supposed to be fun. They've forgotten that they're still running one of the most wonderful creatures in the world."
Mike Lewis hosts the ADN's Dog Blog, adn.com/dogblog. He can be reached at mlewis@adn.com.
By MIKE LEWIS
mlewis@adn.com