Independent. Serious. Silly. These words describe more than owner Bayley Rowe’s ideal canine athlete. This is how he describes 5-year-old “Stardust,” a Border Collie freestyle, disc dog, and agility competitor hailing from Wildwood, Missouri. But to Rowe, Stardust is more than a well-rounded competitor. She’s his “heart dog.”
“I feel just connected with my dog when we go out,” Rowe explains. “It’s a dance. It’s a game. It’s fun. I’m always smiling and having a good time.”
Rowe and Stardust are more than dog and handler; they’re a dynamic duo whose bond becomes stronger with each sport, whether it’s disc in the summer or agility in the winter. This is more than a story about a handler and his pet. It’s a story about confidence, being in sync, and enjoying one of life’s greatest pleasures: having a dog.
Love at First Sight for Handler Bayley Rowe
Rowe began training with his Labrador Retriever, “Charlie,” when he met a couple whose dogs also competed in agility events. As fate would have it, they planned to breed their Border Collies. “I waited about a year for the litter and when the puppies were being born, I was at a [Disc Dog] competition with my Lab,” Rowe says. “I dropped everything… I drove all the way out to their house, and eight out of nine [puppies] had already been born — two of which were born as I pulled into the driveway.”
But despite having the other puppies back-to-back, Stardust took a bit longer. Rowe notes that it took “an hour or two” before she made her big debut. Initially, because of how long it took, there were doubts whether she would make it.
“I had to shake some life into her, but she was perfectly healthy and fine,” he shares. “I checked up on her about every day. I was like, ‘How’s the little teal puppy? How’s the little teal color one?’ and yeah, I fell in love with her from that day.”
From Virtual to Reality: Stardust’s Journey Into Dog Sports
Rowe has always loved dogs. He fondly remembers “Fly,” the Border Collie from “Babe.” He also grew up near Purina Farms, where his mother regularly took him to see the Incredible Dog Show. But it wasn’t until he played “Nintendogs,” a video game in which players can care for and compete with a virtual dog, that he fell in love with agility competitions. “I would play ‘Nintendogs’ on my DS when I was little, and I was like, ‘God, I want to do this someday,'” Rowe recalls.
Once he brought home 8-week-old Stardust, that dream was one step closer to being a reality. Yet, the road to disc and agility competitions wasn’t easy — especially once Stardust reached her “teenage years.” Here, the once biddable pup was moody and independent, missing cues and ignoring recalls. It was as though she was saying, “I’m not doing any of this.”
Rowe explains that there’s very little room for error in competitive dog sports — a single knocked bar could mean the difference between placement versus nothing at all. He feared that he’d “ruined” his first dog. “I texted her breeder, and I was like, ‘Oh my God, she hates me. What do I do? I don’t know how to deal with this,'” he says. “Eventually I got a recall out of her, but that was one of the first challenges for sure … Spoiler alert: she doesn’t hate me. She’s fine.”
Given Stardust’s track record, “fine” is certainly an understatement. She won third place at the UpDog International Finals’ 2023 ThrowNGo. A year later, she won eighth place in the freestyle competition at the 2024 event. And the wins aren’t expected to stop there.
Rowe explains, “The rest of this year is nearly fully booked with competitions every weekend between mostly disc and agility … so I’m busy year-round with this dog and my other dogs competing and performing.”
Winning Eighth at UpDog Felt “Just Like Magic”
Many handlers have performance anxiety when it comes to competitions, and Rowe is no exception. He shares that in the early days of showing Stardust, he’d miss cues, forget the course, and just plain feel on edge. But just as Stardust’s skills evolved with each training session, so did Rowe’s confidence.
“I’ve always been a very anxious person myself, and I think that used to really show in my freestyle and my agility,” he says. “That’s gone now… Yes, I’m still anxious, I still have competition anxiety, but now I go out there, and disc, and I feel just connected with my dog.”
“For freestyle, we had our first round in horrible wind. It was garbage, like the wind was so bad. But we went out, had a pretty good round. A lot of really good teams didn’t.” he says.
Despite the weather, Rowe was excited to see Stardust land a spot in the top 15. He wondered whether she could land in the top 10 in the second round. What happened next still touches Rowe nearly two months later.
“A lot of times when I’m on the field, I’ll walk off, and I’ll kind of like space out or forget everything that happened,” he shares. “But this was the most tangible feeling I’ve ever had in a round. Full connection and joy and just like accuracy and confidence between me and my dog. Like we nailed every single sequence, every single trick in our routine, and it was just like magic. It felt awesome. I loved it, and I can feel every moment of it so strongly still.”
What’s In the Stars for Stardust?
When Stardust isn’t training for her next competition, she enjoys spending time with the four other dogs in her household: a fellow Border Collie, a Labrador Retriever, a Beagle, and an Aussie mix. “Around the house, she’s definitely got more of the silly personality coming out. She’s cuddly, sometimes needy, slightly annoying sometimes…she’s got fight in her,” Rowe says. He adds that she has an incredible “on/off switch,” allowing her to unwind completely. Stardust was doing just that during our interview, unable to be awakened for comment.
Catch! The AKC Disc Dog Challenge will premiere on ESPN2 on Saturday, June 15 at 12PM ET. You won’t want to miss these high-flying dog teams in action.