Two Golden Guest Stars & Some Tips for the Big Day! (DWTDS Week 6)

Welcome back to Dancing with the Doggie Stars - Week 6!

Wow, I can’t believe that we’re at the end of Week 6 already! “Time sure flies when you’re having fun” – hee! Hee!

Only 2 & half weeks left to go until the deadline and the DWTDS Finale in Week 9, when I’ll be displaying all the wonderful routines that our dance teams have been working so hard on! I’m so excited – going around my friends in Blogland and checking out some of the latest ”behind-the-scenes” sneak peeks, I’ve seen all sorts of really imaginative ideas for routines and props ranging from a bouquet of roses to a feather duster! – I really can’t wait to see what everyone comes up with! (And some of the super-organised doggies have started submitting their entries already! Oh my God, have you seen Mango’s ‘Mastiff Ballet’??!!)

Don’t forget – as well as the judge’s decisions, there will also be a Readers’ Choice Award - based on YOU voting for your favourite dance teams! So get ready for some great entertainment…and some hard voting, I’m sure!  

Talking of dance teams, we have had 2 more late additions to the DWTDS Dance Team! My old blog friend, Kasha the Dainty Dane, who – at 9yrs old – is probably the most – ahem – ‘mature’ doggie in the competition! But she’s going to show everyone that senior doggies can dance too! And I also have another Sheltie friend joining the team: Lassiter Chase, who will be entering with his human’s little niece!

Lassiter Chase is a long time reader of my blog but he has only just started his own blog – especially because of the competition! So if you have a moment, I hope you’ll pop over to visit Lassiter Chase to say hello! Another of our competitors – Lacey the Great Dane (who is the youngest competitor, at just 8 months!) has also just started her own blog, especially for the competition. Lacey lives in Far North Queensland (sort of like Crocodile Dundee country!), on a big farm with lots of other animals.I hope you might pop over to visit her too, when you’re free!

*(well, if Blogger will let you, that is! I’m STILL having problems leaving comments for many friends on Blogger! I try using ‘Anonymous’ or ‘URL’ if I can but some blogs are set up so that you don’t get that option – you can only leave a comment if you have a Google account…so I can’t do anything! )

Now, this week, with the big day fast approaching, I thought it would be good to share some tips for when you finally put on your costumes and step out onto the dance floor:

• The show must go on! As any performer will tell you, if something goes wrong in the routine - don’t stop to correct it – just keep going, move on to the next trick! Like if us doggies miss a trick or did a Spin instead of an Around or just Sat down and stared blankly into space (my specialty – hee! hee!) - tell your humans not to panic and try to fix it…just keep going! Nobody will know because nobody else knew what the routine was supposed to look like anyway – but if you stop and try to fix it or repeat it, then everybody will know that there was a mistake! Plus you’ll fall behind in your music and that’ll make your human even more panicky & flustered. So just keep on dancing!
• (* As a great example of this, in one of our guest performances today, the doggie totally gets the move wrong but…can you see it? Check out Chloe’s performance below and see if you can guess where she got the routine wrong! )

• Don’t forget your dress rehearsal! We doggies don’t generalise well and so if something is slightly different, it can really freak us out. Like if your human suddenly wears a weird skirt that hangs down around their legs and flaps around…or the special fancy collar around your neck makes a weird rustly sound when you’re moving…or even if the broom stick you’ve been used to practising with is suddenly replaced by a shiny cane which smells strange…So don’t forget to try your routine with your costumes at least once before doing it for real.

You sure you put my bow-tie on right?

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• Get your human to fill in the blanks! If you’re a slow-thinking doggie like me, it might take you a bit of time to – ah – get into position or - um - remember how to do that move…well, Hsin-Yi found that if she just stood there, waiting for me to do it (like, you know it takes me 5mins to lower my bottom down into a Sit – hee! hee!) – it’s really obvious that I’m taking a loooong time…so Hsin-Yi would always do something while waiting for me, so that it looks like she planned some kind of simultaneous move all along! It doesn’t have to be super fancy. For example, you might have noticed that in my routines whenever Hsin-Yi asks me to Sit, she always walks in a circle around me while I’m doing it…this uses up the time nicely and looks like we’re doing this really snazzy “Sit-While-My-Human-Circles-Around-Me” move, when actually she’s covering up for me – ha! ha! And by the time she’s come back round to the front of me, I’ve finally got my bum down and we’re ready for the next move together!
• Even if you’re not a slow doggie, getting your human to do something at the same time as you is a really easy way to make your routine look ‘snazzy’ and more like a “dance”, rather than just a human directing a doggie to do tricks – ‘coz that’s what “dancing” is, isn’t it? It’s “synchronised moves to music”. So for example, if your human can also do a Spin when you’re Spinning, that makes it look much slicker than if they just stand there watching you.

• Smile! Most important of all, don’t forget to tell your humans to Smile! Smile! Smile! Everything looks better with a smile. And us doggies feel happier & more relaxed when our humans are smiling. Even if you do everything perfectly, if you look all serious and rigid, it never looks as good as if you’re beaming and laughing, even if you miss a step or two. In fact, especially if you miss a step or two! Hee! Hee! Hsin-Yi is a pro at this: if things go wrong - (and trust me, I have really humiliated her a few times – like the time I jumped up from behind and bashed her head with my paws and nearly knocked her to the ground or the time I suddenly stopped in the middle of a leg weave, with her leg still hooked over my back – and she was left wobbling on one leg and then fell and nearly landed on her face…all in front of a live audience!! ) - well, Hsin-Yi just bursts out laughing (she says it’s either that or burst into tears…and laughing looks better than crying! . OK, it’s a nervous laugh but hey, who can tell, eh? People just see her laughing it off, rather than getting stressy & uptight, and so they cheer you on.

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Oh, one more thing. Music. The rules do say that you must be dancing to music that’s “live” in the room with you – so you can’t just do some tricks together and then dub some music on top of that in the video to ”make it fit”! But I know some of you – especially if you’re a ”plus-sized” doggies like me – may have problems finding a place big enough to perform your routine – like you might have to do it outdoors. And if you do, the background might be so noisy (or windy) that the camera machine can’t pick up the music in the video…so we won’t be able to hear what you’re dancing to!

So as a compromise, if this is your problem, you can dub your music over your video as long as you keep your original footage soundtrack too (ie. all the background noise stuff) – this way it will still be like we’re watching it “live” coz we’ll be able to hear your human talking to you and any other interesting sound effects! That’s what Mango’s had to do with his routine (and his brother, Dexter too) coz they live by a big, busy main road which was so noisy it covered up his dancing music – so he got his Momma to just dub it again on top of his original sound track, so that we could hear it better.

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Okay! Now, I know you’ve all been waiting to see our special guest stars! This week, we’ve got 2 wonderful dancing stars performing for us. I’m sure many of you will already know Amber-Mae, the gorgeous, multi-talented Golden Retriever, and her equally beautiful sister, Chloe, who live in Malaysia.

Amber-Mae & Chloe also live with Amber’s son, River, and her little daughter, Megan-Joy (who you’ve all met a couple of week’s ago) – as well as a non-Golden sibling, Faith the Dalmatian. And leading this little pack is their human, Melissa-Jane who is a great doggie trainer, as well as lots of fun! (and has a gorgeous singing voice too – we know – we’ve heard her!)

Amber-Mae, of course, is a super talented doggie – she does Agility, Obedience, Conformation, Flyball as well as Canine Freestyle (the fancy name for doggie dancing), and she also acts in TV and films too! Naturally, she is a ‘professional’ in the dance ring and has wowed audiences all over Malaysia!

Chloe is a beauty queen extraordinaire and has won lots of ribbons at dog shows. She’s also performed dancing too although she isn’t as advanced (or as fast a doggie) as Amber-Mae – but Melissa-Jane thought it would be nice to do a routine with both, so that you can see 2 different routines from 2 different doggies with different personalities!

So first let’s welcome Chloe, who will be dancing to the song from the Addam’s Family (Don’t you think this is  just the CUTEST routine ever?! And remember – can you spot where Chloe made her big ‘boo-boo’?)

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Well? It was actually right in the beginning, after Chloe sat up in the Beg, she was supposed to reverse back out through Melissa’s legs – but she didn’t! But that’s OK – Melissa told us that she decided to just keep on walking in a circle, with Chloe’s head still between her legs! I bet you couldn’t tell, huh? And I actually think the improvisation is a really cute move!

And now, let’s welcome the one & only Amber-Mae who will be dancing the Cha-Cha!

Isn’t Amber-Mae a fantastic dancer? All those Spins…and on such slippery floor too! Hsin-Yi says she wishes I had 1/10th of Amber’s energy and speed – ha! ha! – instead of always looking like I’m dancing in slo-o-o-ow motion! Hee! Hee!

Well, that’s all for this week! I hope you have enjoyed this week’s DWTDS episode – tune in again next week for more fun & festivities!