I had the worst day at work on Friday. I was more than ready to hit the road and spend the weekend with friends and Sophie!
We had a great flyball weekend! Sophie's team took 3rd on Saturday and 1st on Sunday in our division. She had a few 4.9 runs but most were 5.1/5.2 which is decent. She is definitely consistent.
She had a minor spook out on Saturday. I have no clue what caused it but I definitely noticed it as a I lined her up to run so I was able to signal to our captain we need a replacement. We pulled her from that race and took her for a walk. She was fine and barking for her to run shortly after that.
She slept well in the hotel until 5:40am when she decided she was ready to run again. Sunday runs were good. Our start times are never consistent and it something we are working on. We range from .03 to .8. One of my teammates watched us and offered some advice. We backed up a foot, released a second earlier and in one race (4 heats) we got .03, .05, .06 and .04. It was awesome!!! We weren't able to repeat it the next race but we will keep working on it.
All in all it was a good weekend. Time spent with Sophie and great friends definitely made up for an awful work day. Now a few pictures (sorry for the bad quality they were from my iphone. If I wasn't running Sophie, I was shagging balls or taking splits for another team. No time to pull out my other camera...next time hopefully
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| Two dogs passing at the start line |
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| Benny patiently waiting his turn to race. He received his Onyx title this wknd! (20k points) |
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| D'art waiting not so patiently |
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| My taking off |
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| Zipper looking cool in his crate between races |
Congrats Benny on the Onyx! That takes a lot of dedicated people and dogs to acheive.
ReplyDeleteThose starts are pretty good, and you know you will only get better with them. I'm kind of glad I run a height dog, so I never have to worry about starts, just passes. The one time I ran a start dog I was all over the map.
Sounds like a great weekend! My dog Chase, is usually start dog. I find it so much easier than passing! LOL. But he may have to pass on his next team. And I think Jet, my height dog, is going to be a passer. So I better get better at it! :)
ReplyDeleteWhat a fun weekend! I don't know much about flyball, but I'm sure you'll get those start times consistent. Keep workin' at it! :)
ReplyDeleteAlso, love the schnauzer :)
Flyball sounds like so much fun. We don't have it in our area (Fargo, N.D.). Is it hard to get a dog started in flyball, as far as training? We've done agility and obedience and some disc tricks.
ReplyDeleteHave you done any posts on flyball for beginners? I will have to look through your blog and see.
K-Koira: We are all very proud of Benny. He is a great dog. At the end of his run, he hops into his handler's arms and gets cheese. I will have to try to catch a picture of that next time!
ReplyDeleteCynthia: Passing is not our strong suit. Sophie has no problem coming out of the lanes while a dog charges into the lane. She is not quite focused enough to run into the lane as a dog comes out. That is high on our list of things to work on since start dog can be tiring with re-runs!
Nat: Thanks. Benny is a cutie!
Lindsay: I actually have no posts on how we got into flyball, I will have to write about that soon. Sophie picked it up relatively easily since she had a love for retrieving and good recall. We also found out she has a very high tug drive which makes for good speed coming off the box. The hardest thing to teach so far has been passing.
Ace is one of those nutty, obsessed-with-retrieving lab mixes. This can of course be very useful but also very annoying. He's got some speed, but can be a klutz. And he has a great recall.
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