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.

Dogzworth open practice (Guides Canins)

Several of our team members went for a shared practice with Dogzworth at their practice facility, which was the first time there for all of us and our dogs. I was hoping that all Lucy would need before doing a full run would be a single recall, which worked at her last tournie. Ideally this will be all she'll need at our team's first tournament next year so that most of the warmup time can go to the greener dogs. Well, it didn't exactly work - she was in scatterbrain mode and took a few upclose boxturns to get into it. I think this might be because I hurried her into the building and right away put her to work without letting her get accustomed to her environment. Plus, she was slow overall tonight.

Lucy and Sammy took turns passing into each other, which went great.

Team practice

Lucy was handled first by L. and later by C. and did just great while I boxloaded. I had given them some super delicious treats to give her, so she didn't care about me at all. I've been leaving the box untriggered for a while now to pattern her into placing her mouth properly over the ball.

Saturday October 13th 2007 - team practice

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

Lucy helped the green dogs with distraction training by doing recalls (on the flat since we're down to one set of jumps at the moment) in the other lane while they were doing recalls in their own lane. She also helped them with more of the passing exercise that we did last week. At one point, I handed her to K. to try running her while I hid and watched. While she did do a run or two, I think it would have went a lot better if I had put her in a crate, then casually wandered off, then the other person would take her from her crate. I suspect she wouldn't have been looking for me as much that way, especially if she was being rewarded with some super duper treats. :-)

2007 entries to October 13th

Here are Lucy's 2007 flyball journal entries to October 13th.

Saturday October 6th 2007 - team practice

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

Today Lucy helped the green dogs learn about being passed. They would do a recall from the box, and then Lucy would pass into them on her way to do a full run. Some of the dogs looked a little surprised to see her, but she was a pro and just went and did her thing.

Saturday and Sunday September 8th and 9th 2007 - Burnin Rubber NAFA Tournament (Carp curling rink)

(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.)

Thursday September 6th 2007 - guests at other team's outside practice

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

Lucy did some nice tight passes into K., and she didn't deek around any jumps when being passed by R. including one which was relatively tight.

Saturday August 25th 2007 - team practice

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

Did a bunch of no-jump up-close boxturns with the box unsprung to get her to place her mouth better. Also, did the lanes-close-together thing doing recalls with Sammy. No question, Sammy's got the racing thing down, but Lucy, well, not quite! :-)