Monday October 30th 2006 - Anniversary!

(Backfilled in October 2009 due to impending closure of Geocities)

Happy 1st flyball anniversary, Lucy! Lucy's (and my) first ever flyball class was about a year ago, October 2005. From humble beginnings obediently complying to my strange requests for her to jump onto and off of a carpet-covered plank leaning against our living room wall, to now doing full runs and getting super-excited every time she sees a flyball lane, she has from day one been a wonderful dog to learn the sport with. It's a true joy for me to have the opportunity to witness her eager, enthusiastic enjoyment of the sport. I look forward to a future of more flyball with Lucy!

Saturday October 21st 2006 - team practice (TTH)

(Backfilled in October 2009 due to impending closure of Geocities)

Practice went fine; nothing new to report. Due to various circumstances, Lucy's next team practice won't be until mid-November. Between now and then, we have a flyball seminar to look forward to and hopefully our first house league event as well!

Saturday October 14th 2006 - team practice (TTH)

(Backfilled in October 2009 due to impending closure of Geocities)

Our teammates all having other commitments, today it was just Lucy and me, and today's session was all about proofing with loose balls, starting with just one and working our way up to more. She made some "mistakes" on some runs where she just went for the closest loose ball, but by the end of the practice she was doing full runs with 7 or 8 loose balls scattered on both sides of the lane at various places such as where the timers would be, right next to the box, offset from the jumps, and immediately in front of jumps. I had practiced some loose ball proofing at home this week as a warm-up to this. I think this will be a two steps forward, one step back thing, meaning the next time we try this she will likely be back to square one but hopefully won't take as long to progress to where we left off today. In any case, it was definitely a worthwhile exercise.

Saturday October 7th 2006 - team practice (TTH)

(Backfilled in October 2009 due to impending closure of Geocities)

We started with some head-to-head racing with Sammy, and the two of them decided to play comedians. In the first run, I released Lucy a few seconds after Sammy started, and Lucy decided she wanted to run in Sammy's lane (what a good dog, she totally ignored Lucy). I wondered if she was trying to chase Sammy, but then she did it again the very next run, when Sammy hadn't been released yet. Once Lucy got it straightened out which lane she was supposed to run in, Sammy decided she wanted to play the same game so Sammy ran over to run in Lucy's lane (before Lucy had been released)! These were their first runs of the day and after those initial goofups they ran in their proper lanes the rest of the practice. Good news: Lucy and Sammy can now do running passes with each other! "Passing" has been going so well in recent practices that we decided to let the dogs do an actual running pass. Both dogs did excellently, no matter if they were the first or second dog to run! I videotaped today's session and it's fun to watch the pass in slow-mo. For some of the runs I set up the video camera for a good side shot close-up at the box at dog's-eye level. Watching it in slow-mo you can see how the dog actually catches the ball in the air so I now have a much better appreciation for the co-ordination it takes on the part of the dog! Also, from watching the slow-mo I could see that she's starting to develop a half-decent push off the box.