was one of a litter of nine puppies picked up by animal control in a small Texas town in early July, 2008. We drove to Dallas and picked him up from a rescue when he was about 12 weeks old.
Border Collies are my favorite breed for all of the reasons that get too many of them into trouble with owners that aren't prepared for living life with this breed. Not everyone is cut out to provide the activities, exercise, and mental stimulation needed for the majority of BC's.
I try to help with rescuing abandoned border collies from kill shelters when I can, but it's a heartbreaking issue at times. At any one time, there are at least a dozen that I'm following across the country that I'd adopt myself if I could. Instead, I do what I can to help and try and get them out of a bad situation. If you're ready for a border collie, please be open to the idea of rescuing one from a shelter.
Zio spent much of the practice running recalls next to the team's other dogs. He tended to stray toward the other lanes at first, but he had to keep running recalls until he had run against all of the other dogs and not thought about chasing.
We ran a few box turns with props and he was doing okay. Si let me bring one of the boxes home and we practiced this afternoon as well. I've had to put the cone back in to get him to do a turn again instead of punching the box. He seems to remember again, but I'll leave the cone about 6-8 feet from the cone until he "gets it" again.
Full Speed Ahead's two teams have been placed in the same division for the Saturday races on March 13. That may cause some logistical problems, since we have team members that run a dog on each team.
Zio and I are both ready to get out there and practice. This will be an outdoor practice at the OKPaws field, so I'm hoping the weather stays nice enough so it doesn't get canceled. It's already down to two weeks until the next tournament, so we have this weekend and next to work on passing and box turns.
It would be nice if Si could get Meekah some work on turns too so that she can get back in the mix. Several teammates earned titles in Canton, but Burst and Tristen hit 10,000 points toward their first plaque!
Wow! Such an awesome weekend at Zio's first flyball tournament hosted by a great group of people from Hyper Flight Flyball Club in Dallas. Flyball really is a fun, tight knit group of people. I never anticipated how much is going on in your head during runs. It was all I could do to get Zio to the right starting point, watch the timing lights, release him at the right time, run up to the start, and then call and encourage him to chase me! I could never remember to see his start times or even his finish times for that matter. I usually had to ask someone else to watch for me. LOL
Here is a quick recap of Zio's races...
Saturday Feb 20 Match 1 Races 1 - 4 were all "no finish" (NF) because he saw the other dog when he turned and missed all the jumps coming back.
Match 2 Races 1 and 4 - NF because when I ran up to the finish line to encourage him to come back over the gates, the tug swung through the timing lights and faulted him. Rookie handler!!
Races 2 and 3 - I think about a 5.3 and a 5.126, if I remember right. He's turning the wrong way now to see the dog in the right lane, but manages to get back over all four jumps!
Sunday Feb 21 Match 1 The second race he dropped the ball and came back wide of the jumps, but the other three races were good! His best time in this match was a 4.8... I think.
Match 2 All four races were good and he posted a couple of 4.7 times! He's still turning wrong, but completing the runs!
I thought he was done for the day, but one of our teammates was late coming back from lunch and Zio prepped to substitute in on our "Step on It" team's next match. Susan made it back near the end of warm-ups though and Zio was on the sideline again.
Connie did a wonderful thing and offered to let Zio run for her dog on the last race of their match, so he got to run in his very first team match. He did fantastic!!! When he ran, the ball accidently fell out of the box (which is a fault) before he got there and he picked it up off the floor and come back perfectly. Both teams were faulted though, so I was able to send him back again and he beat the other team's re-run to win the race. The best part is that he completely ignored the other dogs and the other lane!!!
Connie did one better and said that Zio could run the second and third races in the next match and all three in the last match! I have no idea what times we ran or who won, but my little man did an awesome job and I am so proud of him.
I can hardly wait until the next tournament in March! Here is some video from the last singles match.
Hyperflight did a David Copperfield and made a tournament appear out of nothing in Canton, TX! It was actually an illusion, slight of hand to make you believe it was going to be in Bonham!
The whole team is going so we'll have two teams running standard and then Zio running singles.
It appears the city of Bonham, TX double booked their facility and the flyball tournament doesn't have a home for this weekend. The host club may have another location lined up in Canton, TX that is two hours further away. Right now,about half of our team would rather skip this one.
Zio did something hilarious yesterday! I put his harness and Z-Control Skid Boots on before running a few last practice runs. After we played tug at the end of each practice run, he would scratch the grass with his hind feet! Almost like he was feeling it and strutting his stuff!
I've decided to let Zio decompress from practice until the tournament so that it will be exciting and fun to run again.
I spent Saturday and Sunday helping OKPaws with the agility trial they hosted in Norman. I worked the raffle table and even won some of the prizes too! (I let someone else draw names.) Zio and I have only done minimal practicing, but I'm off from work tomorrow, so we should get some solid practice in.
Zio's litter-mate, Ecko, is going to have his own youtube channel too! From what I've seen of him, Zio and Ecko have a lot of similarities, so it will be great to see him. It's been a lot of fun comparing notes about the two. Zio is on the left in this photo and Ecko is on the right. Their sister "Fox" is in the middle.
The tournament schedule has been released and it should be exciting. Si took a guess on his time for seeding purposes, so we'll see how it goes. Hopefully, he'll have a lot of fun! After that, I'll hope for complete runs, with swimmers turns, and sub 5 second times! ;)
We did some runs for about fifteen minutes last night and he was doing great. I left the props as reminders, but I may start trying to wean him away from them. The cone is currently about five feet from the box, and interestingly, he would go to the box as normal, but then return on the same side of the cone. Great for doing sharp turns I guess, but he obviously wasn't using it as a turn reference.
We still haven't done his first tournament and I had to make some decisions about his second tournament. There aren't enough dogs for a third team, so Si suggested that he get some team experience by sharing duties on the second team. All that is sort of contingent on him learning how to run past other dogs at the start finish line in a three week time frame at practice. If all goes well at the February tournament and he learns to pass, then he'll run on the second team about half the time on Saturday and maybe a third of the time on Sunday during the March tournament. I didn't really want to go all the way to Texas for a part time weekend, so I signed him up for racing singles on both days too. Hopefully, that's not going to be too much.
Zio ran several full runs, but consistently needed a prop to turn properly on the box. He ran 7 or 8 times against one of the dogs from Dogs Gone Wild. Lot's of progress, but a few small steps backwards with his focus.
I hope to get him to not having any props before the tournament. I took some video of the team running practice against DGW too and posted the video on Zio's YouTube account.
We had a pretty good Saturday of practice. We probably did five sessions of 8-10 runs each. With two weeks until the tournament, I was happy to see that he remembered what to do after a week of no practice while the ice thawed. We did cut one of the last sessions short when he lost focus and seemed to forget what he was supposed to do at the box, but he got it back together in the last session.
Today's team practice may be a little crazy with the Dogs Gone Wild team coming in from Tulsa to practice with us. I have one of the practice boxes, so I'll have to be there first thing. This is the last team practice before the tournament. OKPaws is having an agility trial next week and we'll be helping out with that. Time to see what my little man can do!
With steady temperatures above freezing, our practice field (aka the backyard) has enough area melted that we may actually get some practice in soon! It's supposed to rain today, so it may be too muddy, but there is hope!
I found out yesterday that the Tulsa flyball team, Dogs Gone Wild, is going to come down and join us for practice Sunday. It should be fun to meet some others. We'll have to see how challenging it is for Zio to stay focused with more dogs and people running around.
Zio has officially been included in the practice time slot for "Competing Dogs" too! :)
