Ready, set, ball

So Saturday's racing was rained out. It stopped around noon but the field was soaked/muddy. Lucky for us once it stopped raining on Saturday it did not start up again. Sunday morning, at 5:30am I received an email saying we were expected at the field by 7:30.

Sophie ran well. We had some 4.9 runs right off the bat which was nice! She was consistent all day long. Even when mid race we had to swap out our height dog and start running 12 inch jumps which we never do.

She was amped and ready to run. She is not a big barker in the ring unless she is really ready to run then she barks her head off. From race 1 all the way until our last run, she was barking.

I know dogs learn with repetition, even if you don't mean to teach something they pick up on words/cues. I didn't set out to teach Sophie a start cue, it just happened. She can be bouncing around impatiently waiting, I say "ready" while putting an arm around her back legs and she hunkers down and distributes her weight. For lack of a better way to say it...it is so cool! lol She gets it!

We had a few early starts (handlers fault of course) and by our last race a few ball bobbles but overall it was a good day.

One of our teammates was out of town and her dog is one of our height dogs. We have 4 height dogs total, 2 being green dogs and one an older yorkie. So when the teammate realized she would be out of town, she asked me to run Benny (mini schanuzer). Benny has never run for anyone but his owner so we trained for a few weeks (made her stay in her car during practice so he wouldn't look for her.)

He ran well for me this weekend. But wow is it tiring running 2 dogs. Benny was back up on two teams, Sophie was start dog on one team. I was running around all day long with little break. Whew, I don't know if I can ever run 2 dogs full time.

Photos to come at a later date. There was a professional photographer at the event so I am hoping he got some good photos of Sophie.

Then of course there is Sophie’s view of flyball

courtesy of Cafe Press