NAFA tourney in Trenton; Lucy gets a new title

Lucy and Sammy raced with an open DGB team at the beautiful Community Gardens in Trenton. The lineup was Chaos (a Dutch Shepherd from Pawzie Traction who got not one, but two perfect .000 starts!), Lucy, Sammy, and Envy (mini aussie who set the jump heights at 10"). The team ran very cleanly and got tons of points. Lucy picked up her FDCh-G title and a cool handmade memento to mark the occasion. She ran a nearly flawless tournament (just one bobble) and for once I didn't make her do any hot passes, so for once we didn't cause a single flag. Lucy was her usual steady self.

I changed how I release her. Instead of a hand on the collar and one at her waist, I hold her waist only with both hands. This has the benefit of keeping my feet out of her way, and I'm hoping this will better enable her to crouch down. Might try in practice working up to lifting her feet onto mine as I saw lots of people do, but I'm not sure how that will work.

One last note about the tugging situation: She's at the point now where she happily drops the ball to latch onto the treat tug, which she did every time. But, no real tugging yet, and I'm not pushing it for now, although she was tugging well outside the ring for a little bit.

DGB's "Go Ballistic" NAFA tournament (Carp curling rink)

Lucy and Sammy raced on an open team with speedy little bc Maxi and the reliable veteran Idgie who set the jump height at 8" for us. For most of the tournament the lineup was Sammy, Lucy, Maxi, Idgie. Jasmine made her tournament debut as warmup dog and did great with her recalls.

Lucy not only ran the whole tournament clean (except for a few hot passes, my fault), but for the first time ever she didn't bobble a single ball, 32 heats over the course of the tournament. Yay!

When she passed into Sammy, releasing her at 36-37 was avoiding hot passes but I'm not sure how tight the passes were or weren't.

When she did starts (last two races on Sunday), I released her on the last yellow at about 26 feet. Whenever she does starts again I'd like to try backing her up and starting on the second yellow. It was kind of funny, kind of annoying, that when she was moved to starts, she kept leaning to the left while waiting to be released, since she was so used to leaning to the left to move into the lane after Sammy flew past her.

Here's a photo taken at last weekend's tournament. Is it just me, or does she vaguely resemble a kangaroo in this pose?

Oh and I boxloaded one race for another team. It was fun and neat to see a different perspective on the dogs.

Paws On Fire "Rescue Me" U-Fli tournament

Our first tournament since September! It was the first annual Paws on Fire "Rescue Me" U-Fli tournament. The fantastic thing is that all proceeds from the tournament go to rescue! Kudos to POF for a fantastic idea. A local tv news station filmed a piece about the tournament, viewable here.

It was also the debut of our home team, the first time Sammy and Lucy have had the opportunity to run on the same team at the same time. It was a pickup team with two guest dogs and the lineup was Sammy (who did a great job at her first time in starts), Lucy, Niki (an awesome little german shepherd/corgi mix height dog rescued from homelessness in Iqaluit), and Blink (a very charismatic rescue mix working hard to overcome her issues) in anchor. Milo made his tournament debut as warmup dog and looked like a total pro doing his recalls and full runs. Short-but-fast little Niki set the jump height at the minimum 6". Special thanks to Jasmine's human who did a terrific job as first-time boxloader, and to two other teammates who took detailed stats for every race.

Lucy ran clean the whole tournament except for her one and only bobble which resulted in her missing a jump. Well, she did get flagged for some hot passes, but that was my fault, not hers. :-) Her times were in the 5.2-5.3 range when the pass was relatively tight, and she set a new personal best time: 5.222 (previously 5.241... funny how we flyball folk can get excited about such miniscule time improvements!) including the pass into Sammy.

On Saturday, releasing her from 30-32 feet mostly resulted in good tight passes. On Sunday, releasing her from 35-37 feet was necessary to avoid hot passes.

Reviewing video from today's races reminds me that Lucy's flyball striding is terribly inefficient. The peak of her arc is midway between jumps rather than over the top of the jumps, so she's practically landing on top of each jump, coming down within inches of each one. If we can get her striding over them properly she could shave a bit off her time.

The photographer captured several nice shots of Lucy, viewable here (pages 7 and 8).

The weather was beautiful: sunny and warm with an unseasonal high of 22 degrees.

Team practice; getting ready for U-Fli

Our flyball team will be making its debut at the U-Fli tournament in April. Woo hoo! It will be a pickup team consisting of Sammy, Lucy, and two guest dogs from other teams. One of those guests joined our practice today, running into Lucy. Passes were kept wide but Lucy was just fine with it.

Supplementary team practice at K9 Sense

Gearing up for the tournament debut of some of our flyball team's up and comers, our team is having a few extra practices at a different location to help the dogs learn to generalize flyball (which they have done like total pros). With a few tournaments coming up in the near future Lucy could use a change of flyball scenery too so I brought her tonight and she raced head to head with Tucker and Zara. All the dogs did great :-)

Team practice

Lucy did head to head full runs against Z. and Tk. for the first time. The two greenies acted like seasoned pros, taking a look at Lucy at the start line but never so much as thinking about crossing over.

Team practice

At today's practice we had Lucy and Sammy race head to head, giving Lucy a nice big head start because Sammy loves to race (unlike Lucy who seems utterly oblivious to the fact that there's a dog running in the other lane). When Sammy has a fast dog to race against, or if she's behind the dog in the other lane, she picks up so much speed racing to the box that she has trouble coordinating herself at the box/ball. Took us a while before we realized this because our team doesn't have a speed demon dog. Anyway, giving Lucy a headstart worked like a charm, and Sammy was flawless, running fast and not only catching up to Lucy but even passing her several times!

BREAKING NEWS: At today's practice, 3 of our up and comers completed several beautiful, totally independent full runs with gutter but without a knee, some with the box partially sprung!! Yay!

Yearly review of goals

Here's what I wrote this time last year:

"My goals for Lucy's 2007 flyball year are for her to regain her straight return pass, prove herself in head-to-head racing with strange dogs, do more tugging with her treat tug, and race if a possible opportunity materializes. Mostly I just want to keep having fun with her and watch/help our flyball team continue to develop!"

I'm happy to report that all of those goals were met, and I'm especially happy about the passing one. For 2008, I'd like to see her tug drive continue to improve, and to see the racing debut of our home team.

Practice

Put the video camera on a tripod facing the start line to get a better look at how Lucy's passing Sammy. Today, 25 feet was resulting in hot passes.

Team practice

Practiced passing into Sammy and set up the tape measure to find the ideal release point. 25 feet seems to be the sweet spot, releasing when Sammy's midair over the first jump from the box. The first few times she was hesitant going into the pass which therefore was quite wide, but after a few times she was diving into the pass.