FSA Revamp

Well, what had been hinted at came true over the weekend and our captain has decided to take a break from flyball for a while. He had a lot of changes happen during the last year and felt it would be best to step out and catch his breath. Although I am now the captain, I really expect it to be more of an administrative role going forward. Susan Owen kind of took the role of note taker. Connie, Michele, and probably Katie will be sort of like training coordinators during practices to keep track of which dogs need what training, etc. Although it's sad that we won't see Si and Tristen for a while, I think we'll come out stronger for the change, if for no other reason than it will give people more of a reason to be involved.

Next year is going to be very exciting. We'll start out competing in Division 4 and only have two tournaments to get our Speeding Sheepdogs tuned up before the qualifier in Grove during April. Of course, we have three months of winter practice before hand, but it looks like we'll run Wisp, Cody, Zio, and Jean-Luc together. Unfortunately, the Step On It team will only start out with Deuce, Scout, and Luigi and need to compete as pickup until one of the other dogs is ready to race on a team. I guess we will always have to look at shuffling a dog here or there whenever we have an odd number.

Purina Farms Pics

The Speeding Sheepdogs

Zio

Jean-Luc, Wisp, and Scout

Off and Running Team
Susan and Jean-Luc, Tristen boxloading, Michele and Cody, Katie and Luigi, Connie and Deuce

Championship Weekend!

We had a very good tournament! The Speeding Sheepdogs of Wisp, Scout, Zio, and Jean-Luc set a club best time of 18.419 seconds during the Dream Team Challenge on Friday! Zio set a personal best time of 4.108 seconds (including pass) during an earlier run and almost did it again with a 4.110 during the club best run. We had numerous runs in the 18's as the afternoon wore on. Katie did well in adjusting to passing with a fast dog the more races we ran. Officially, we took third place in our division, but we had decided beforehand that we were running for time and not points. We did not rerun any faults other than false starts.

We went undefeated during the first day of Championship racing on Saturday, going 4-0 in our matches. Burst was still having issues with passing in every match, but Meekah was able to come in and save a couple of matches that had gone down to the fifth race. (best 3 of 5)

Zio had a spectacular crash in the first match of the day Saturday that took out three jumps and knocked the fourth sideways. He still managed to do a decent turn and grab the ball. Of course there weren't any jumps to return over after the destruction. He wasn't injured and continued to race all weekend.

The Off and Running team of Cody, Deuce, Luigi, and Jean-Luc went undefeated and took 1st place in division 7 of the regular tournament Saturday. Michele and Cody recorded a perfect 0.000 start during one of the later races which I believe is the first one for Full Speed Ahead. Connie has also achieved a perfect start, but I believe it was while she competed with Dogs Gone Wild.

Sunday wasn't nearly as good for our Championship team. Burst went outside the lane again on a pass and got tangled in the timing light's cord. She injured her leg or shoulder and Meekah had to complete the remaining races. We lost the first three matches of the day before beating the eventual Division 5 champions, High Fives, in our last match (their only defeat). Our 5-3 record was good enough for second place after a tiebreaker.

Off and Running brought home another 1st place in the Sunday regular tournament and set a team best of 21.012 seconds. Cody had another perfect start with Doug running him for Michele.

Next year will have us racing in division 4 initially. I have no doubt that with some of the faster dogs coming along in training, we will be running in the 17's by summer time.

Zio's Crash is below.

Counting Down!

Just a few days left until we leave for St. Louis and the championships. Practice was good Sunday with Zio holding his turn while racing Wisp. Of course this is with the jump board in place. I'll practice a few turns tonight and tomorrow and it will be as good as it will get until after the championship.

I've noticed that he tends to have problems with his turns after a box loader mistakenly puts his ball in the wrong side. In tournaments, it can take a few warm-up sessions to just get him turning the right way after punching the box. The ball got loaded on the wrong side for him twice during the last five practice runs with the team Sunday. For my own sanity, I want to do some repetitions here in the backyard so it's as clear as can be going into Dream Team on Friday.

Our Dream Team of Wisp, Scout, Zio, and Jean-Luc have the potential to get in the low 18 second range. That would be too fast for our division in the Championships Saturday and Sunday. If we had run a sub-19 second race a month earlier, we would be racing in a faster division.

Next year, we will be racing against faster teams in division 4, so I'd expect us to look at which dogs will let us be competitive. Our fastest team would be Wisp, Cody, Zio, and Jean-Luc if we had to decide today. Sometime next year, Maverick, Fly, Jet, and Jeep could be in that mix. Burst and Meekah can still be in the mix too with continued training. At some point, we're going to have to decide as a club how our top team gets selected. Hopefully we can decide how to do that without hurting anyone's feelings.

Interesting...

Think Sgt. Shultz from Hogan's Heros if you are old enough to remember. I tried a little twist on sending Zio to the box this evening. No ball, just sent him to the box from about ten feet.

As soon as I sent him, I started running away instead of waiting on him. The second time, I put a ball in the box and did the same thing. He completely ignored the ball and drove hard off the box to catch up to me. I absolutely love the punch off the box, but I'd hate for him to "forget" that ball during championships in a week. We did it about five more times, eventually sending him from about twenty feet. He ignored the ball every time and drove to me.

I'll try it some more tomorrow, but eventually, I'll put some jumps up and do a real start and see what happens.

Turning

Zio and I practiced a little bit yesterday evening. More of the same really... doing some walls turns and then some box turns without the ball. The main difference is that I set the box up against the brick wall where we do wall turns instead of walking over to the privacy fence. My logic is that we do wall turns here and I want to do box turns the same way.

The Championship weekend is getting closer! This time next week, I'll be getting ready for my last day of work before heading to St. Louis.