Bark'n Bonham

Well, the first tournament of the year is in the books! We set a new club best of 18.193 with Wisp, Cody, Zio, and Jean-Luc. Wisp set a best time on the clock of 4.017 seconds and Quigli did 6.9 seconds. Jet made a very successful debut and did a great job on remembering everything Katie has drilled into him. I think he ran a 4.9 on his best run of the weekend.

Zio did not have a great tournament. He completely lost his turns during the tournament until the very last match on Sunday. Trish Keck gave us a suggestion to try and we used it during warmup and he actually did five consecutive good turns during that match! We'll keep trying that in practice and hope for the best! Cody came up sore and limping Sunday, so we swapped teams with he and Scout. Scout managed to even run a couple of 4.8 second runs during the last match of the day Sunday. I'm not sure if it was just a long layoff or the 11" jumps that were the problem with Cody. Michele is going to get his hips x-rayed Friday and we'll have to decide whether he can continue racing on the Speeding Sheepdogs safely.

Readeeeeee!

I think we're all ready for Bonham. We did a handful of turns last night and he was getting some really nice, tight turns. I keep hoping that after a 1000+ practice turns, it must get ingrained what he's supposed to do on the box. I sincerely think that he could post a 3.9 second run if he had a perfect pass and nailed a turn like he does in practice. I'm predicting that he'll do that sometime this year.

The pot luck preparations were completed last night for the enchilada casserole, my bag is packed, the batteries are charged on the cameras, Zio's bag is packed... all I need to do is take care of a half dozen conference calls this morning for work. We should start heading south around noon.

I'm so ready.... let's get racing!!!

Let the 2011 Flyball Season Begin!

Yesterday was our last practice before the first tournament this coming weekend. We started a little early to make sure we had time to get some practice in with the Dogs Gone Wild team from Tulsa. The off season went by pretty fast! A year ago, Zio and I were craming little training sessions in every chance we could so that he could race singles in his debut tournament. Little did I know that he would actually get his first taste of team racing on Sunday afternoon. I've been trying to correct his turn ever since, but I think it will always be a constant training issue.

We picked up a nice passing drill from DGW that should help us desensitize some of the dogs to the dogs coming at them. We worked with one of their dogs that liked to chase and made some good progress with him. Zio (aka Tank) almost had a scarey moment with Cody on a pass that was too close. They bumped into each other, but it must have been a glancing blow, since they both continued with no harm done. I really need to not worry about simulating real passing with such a short runback area. I little slip could cause an injury.

We're holding a little team contest to try and predict the fastest time for the Speeding Sheepdogs team. I haven't revealed my guess yet, but I think we have the potential to race under 18 seconds. Below is our new team logo.