Making Repairs

Although we had a great time in Las Vegas. Zio's turns went straight into the toilet over the weekend. In reviewing the videos, I think the root (or at least the seed) of the problem happened during one particular match.

During warm-up box turns, Zio wasn't paying attention and missed the box completely with his rear end and fell to the ground. He didn't act any worse for wear and he's done it before, so I don't think that caused anything. Just something out of the ordinary that I noticed. We had inserted Wisp into the lineup running last and moved Zio up to third, but we didn't do a good job of communicating that to our box loader. When Zio and Wisp went to the box, the balls was on the wrong side. After that, Zio reverted back to stabbing the box and turning the wrong way the majority of the time.

During the tournament, I watched another team slide a gutter across the lane (about five feet from the box) for one particular dog and it clicked for me. When Zio is at full speed, he ends up sliding into the box to stop (much like Meekah). He usually pushes off while turning and it ends up looking like a sloppy three legged turn. The gutter across the lane reminds the dog to jump to the box instead of sliding into it. I've started using this with Zio in the backyard, but it's hard to judge the effectiveness on grass from only 55 feet. I'll hope it goes toward muscle memory until he can run full speed on matting. I may have to try starting him from shorter starting points until I can fix this.

Zio's Las Vegas Road Trip

A few pictures from our trip to the Rock the West flyball tournament hosted by Rude Dogs West in Las Vegas! We had an awesome time and met a lot of fantastic people. Oh, we also took first place in our division Saturday and Sunday!

Post Vegas

After Las Vegas, the core team for the championship will start working toward becoming a cohesive group. We had hoped to bump up a division by running a fast team in Las Vegas a few times, but that was before we realized that we had submitted a seed time based on the four original dogs heading west. I haven't seen the seeding yet for Las Vegas, but it will probably not allow a run at getting into the 18's without breaking out (aka: no official time).

Hyper Flight's October tune-up tournament will be a litmus test to see how we're doing. We had originally discussed using a core group of Burst, Zio, Jean-Luc, and Wisp (with Meekah and Scout as back-ups). Yesterday, we decided we could probably go with five dogs on the Step On It team so that our Off and Running (OaR) team would be a full team and moved Scout over.

In hindsight, we really need to test Burst at the next team practice without the baby gates to see if she will pass another border collie sized dog. If she won't pass, I think we need to think about going for consistency with Scout and move Burst to OaR. We won't have time to train Burst in the last six weeks before the championships if she hasn't gotten it all summer.

Being the new guy, it doesn't seem like it's my place to say anything. On the other hand, Si seemed to be looking to us to know which dogs were going to be on the Step on It team.

Gastric Torsion

The vet felt that Zio seemed to have a partial gastric torsion (stomach flip or bloat) earlier this week, so I've been hesitant to practice him after he eats in the evening. By the time I feel it's safe, it's getting too dark.

I'm really looking forward to practice this weekend. Wisp is going to practice for the first time in two months and we may end up trying to run a fast team in Las Vegas. With a line up of Wisp, Jean-Luc, Zio and either Burst or Scout, we should be able to easily break into the 18's. The first three can all run under 4.3 seconds and Burst or Scout would be in the 4.6 to 5.0 second range.

If we can get a sub 19 second time, we will bump a division for the championship and not have to worry about breaking out in our current division (18.75 sec). The practice Sunday will answer some unanswered questions for the team. Is Wisp okay to race now? Will Burst stay in the lane if she's followed by a larger dog? How will Jean-Luc handle passing all of the dogs? If Burst won't stay in the lane going first, could she run anchor and pass a dog coming at her?

Oh, Zio and I need to get out to the field tomorrow and throw some long distance discs. The fall tournament is coming up in October and he's the defending amateur champion!

Team Practice

Another good team practice. Eric brought Luke and Zeph again and both will be fast. Luke already has the tug drive and Zeph had excellent striding. Zio helped Jean-Luc with some passing drills and then ran some with the "On the Road Again" team. Maverick did more recalls and is doing really, really good for a new dog. Excellent striding, a tug monster, and actually goes back to line up again like a pro!

Zio finished shredding his canvas crate. This time it's beyond repair. *sigh* Eric recommended some collapsible plastic crates that aren't manufactured anymore. I'll look on ebay and see if I can find one. He gets too worked up in the crate, especially when I'm working with any dog other than him. He bloodies his nose on wire crates. Susan said she will come to a practice and work on his crate manners.

Friday Night Practice

We held a rare Friday practice tonight since the weather turn out so nice! Zio was helping Jean-Luc with some passing drills and then did the same with Jet. Zio did one sloppy turn and I stopped him and we reset. All his other turns were good and he was tugging hard! He's ready to be racing again!

Maverick did recalls over the jumps to the tug and is just a tug-o-maniac! I think it's really the first time I've seen him run all out. Katie called him Meekah fast! He also impressed me while off leash this evening (inside the fence). I could call him from quite a distance and he would come running to me. Such a sweet guy. My wife says he looks like a baby harbor seal when he lays his ears flat and looks at her with those big brown eyes.

Tweaking the Turn

The last tournament was a breakthrough for Zio with his turns. Any practice we could squeeze in during the hot summer days were spent re-teaching his turns without props. Somewhere in his thought process he had determined that it was okay to punch the box if the props weren't there (aka tournaments).

We started with touch practice to the box without a ball and gradually moved back to sending him to the box from forty feet (no ball). I started mixing in a ball once in a while and kept repeating. He finally seemed to get the concept at this last tournament which is why he lowered his best time by .2 seconds. Were his turns perfect? Nope! The general shape of the turn was there, but some were three legged attempts and many went a little wide. But the shape was there!!!

Now we get to fine tune the turns by putting a 10" jumpboard back in with another stanchion and jump board angled on the exit side to keep him from going wide. A good practice last night as he hit the 10" jumpboard with his rear end the first few times, but then started keeping his butt higher for the rest.

Repetitions to follow!

On another note, Maverick is a tug-o-maniac! We're just tugging and chasing at this point though.