Sunday April 1st 2007 - House League #5

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

Today was the the last house league of the 2006/7 season! Here's the summary of the day:

- How suitable for April Fool's Day, I suppose: On the very first heat of Lucy's very first race, she got crossed over on when the green dog in the other lane decided it would be more fun to chase Lucy than to go to their own box. In the dog park, Lucy absolutely loves being chased, but it's "a whole different ball game" when she's playing flyball as she seems to feel a bit stressed/vulnerable. Fortunately it wasn't a high-drive-type of dog and didn't nip at her or anything; it doesn't seem to have unsettled her as no new issues cropped up over the course of the day. It was the only time she was crossed on today so with all the interference-free runs that followed I think she's forgotten all about it.
- In preparation for racing with BackDraft in May we ran 3 or 4 races with them, Lucy always running last, with the jumps at full height which she's never done before. I think she had a little bit of a crush on their cute male BC, Skip...
- She handled BackDraft's box well as her fumble rate was about the same as normal.
- Lucy was timed in her third race of the day with the jumps at full height (these times don't include passing time):

6.41 - fumble
5.97 - clean
6.09 - clean
5.90 - clean

Boy if I thought she deer-hopped over minimum height jumps, does she ever do it on the max height jumps!! She looks so hoppy going to the box but I can't tell if she's equally hoppy on the way back so I'll videotape her at the next practice to see what's going on. The good news is she can run fast when she wants to, so if we can only figure out how to get her to bring that speed onto the flyball lane then her times can only improve. Of course we'll keep working on tightening her turn too.

- For one race I had someone else hold her and I was standing up close near the box to get her running faster but we didn't time it.

In summary, it was a good way to end the house league season as there were no "issues" today and she ran pretty consistently. House league was a very valuable experience that allowed me to learn a lot about my dog. It will be so much more fun when the rest of our team is doing full runs and joining us in the racing lanes next time!