(Backfilled in October 2009 due to impending closure of Geocities)
Despite a sleepless start (Friday night was Walter's first night at a motel and he thought he was supposed to sound the alarm at every single sound of 10 decibels or higher), it was another great tournament! Like last weekend, Lucy and Sammy shared a spot on BackDraft's Regular team. The hectic and noisy two-ring format didn't faze them at all and they both ran clean and consistent the whole tournament! Not a dropped ball or missed jump! They are really proving themselves to be reliable, solid flyball dogs. Both earned their FDCh titles this weekend and their consistent performance was a key factor in the team taking third place out of six teams in the Regular 4 division.
By far the biggest highlight of my weekend was that Lucy has started to tug as her reward! Until today (Sunday) I've only rewarded her with treats but her tug a-ha moment must have come to her Saturday night as she slept... because right from the get-go on Sunday she was tugging hard for all of her races and having a ball with it. The interaction of tugging provides a whole new level of fun for both Lucy and me compared to simply doling out treats and praise. I can definitely see phasing out the treats in the future (I was still giving her a treat or two after tugging, but only after she "won" the game by pulling the tug out of my hands) and hopefully even graduating to a more tuggable type of tug than the treat tug we're using now.
Another success is that she only bobbled the ball on 3 of her 20 heats which is a pretty darn good ratio for her! She still hasn't figured out that flyball is a *race* but that's ok, her a-ha moment is bound to come sooner or later and I'm really happy about the tug a-ha moment that happened!
Time-wise, from the few times that I looked she was in the low sixes. From manually timing the actual run times on the videos we took (ie not including the pass), her fastest was 5.5 on Sunday (which was also her best time at U-Fli), not bad at all considering the jumps were at 12" and she was starting from only 10 feet back due to the dog before her not being able to be passed into.
In summary I'm just so happy that she was totally confident and happy, getting into the game of it especially on Sunday. Our next tournament likely won't be for a long while but this was a good way to go on tourney-hiatus.
Temperature: Clear on Saturday, cloudy on Sunday, highs of about 17 degrees.
Here's a video of one of Lucy's heats. She's the fourth dog racing in the far lane.
Note the wagging tail while she's in the lineup!
Taking full photographic advantage of the gorgeous parkland at the tournament site; I think that's the Bay of Quinte behind the dogs. A sign on the nearby bridge calls it "The Gateway to the Trent-Severn Waterway".
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