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.

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. :-)