(Backfilled in October 2009 due to impending closure of Geocities)
Now that the 90 days are over, Lucy got to race with another team (still waiting for our home team to be ready to race next year). She was originally supposed to have one full spot, but due to a sick dog teams were reshuffled and she ended up double running. She ran starts on Regular 3 and sometimes third, sometimes anchor on Multi 2. I was extremely pleased with how she ran as she had several successes:
Success #1: No deeked jumps while passing into or being passed into!!! Including when she was hot passed into 3 or 4 times on Saturday!!! All that remedial passing practice and running with seasoned dogs has been a tremendous help and I'm tempted to believe that she's completely overcome the passing incident of last November. :-))))
Success #2: Much improved non-bobble to bobble ratio!
Success #3: She set her new personal best time! Her best start dog time (ie not including the start) was 5.241 over 11" in her sixth race on Saturday and she was pretty consistently in the 5.2s and 5.3s with some slower times on Sunday. My best start was .062 but there was quite a range in there! Her best time on her half-spot team was 5.5 including the pass.
Here's one of her runs from Sunday where she gets her butt whooped by a border collie:
There was one "oh crap" moment on Saturday, which was when she was on her start-dog team in the lane adjacent to the head table, and someone had a grilled cheese sandwich at the head table (which is apparently a no-no), and when I released Lucy, well, she decided that that smell was too interesting to pass by uninvestigated. Fortunately she let me pull her off and send her down the lane but her start time for that heat was over 3 seconds!! Thankfully she didn't repeat that performance! Another minor "oh crap" moment was when the ball was loaded into the wrong hole once on Saturday. She wasn't able to do her turn, but she did pick up the ball and bring it back. Early oOn Sunday, she had a few NFs due to ball dropping; these were due to not picking up the ball on a couple of bobbles as well as not having a good grip once or twice (video playback is very helpful in that area!)
I've learned that for warmups even for her very first race, she doesn't need upclose pops off the box in order to situate herself as to where the box is. A recall before the first races of the day is sufficient, and the same goes for Sammy. This will be great when our team is up and running next year so that we can give the green dogs most of the warmup time.
She got a new title: FDCH-S (1000 points), and was awarded one of the couple of dozen individual dog awards: The Twist "New Blood" Award "given to a dog who has recently joined a new team and is doing great this past year". :-)
Notes to self regarding release points:
- STARTS (regular 3): I release her when the third yellow appears. 27' 9" did well at the start of Saturday including a 0.06 but also a false start. Towards the end of Saturday, 26.0' did well including a 0.1. On Sunday, 27' got some .1 starts in the morning, but by the end of Sunday I had to move her up to 25' for .1 starts.
- PASSING INTO K. (multi: on Saturday and one race on Sunday): 27' worked well at the start of Saturday. 26' 6-8" good towards the end of Saturday.
- PASSING INTO J. (multi: mostly on Sunday): mostly I just released her when told to depending on how the previous dogs had run. (due to the post-seeding lineup change, breakout was a risk.)
