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.