Tournament Hangover

There is always a hangover from a flyball tournament. My mind is still on racing and it's hard to get focused on the tasks at hand. Our tournament went so-so. With the Championships in two months, we have that much time to get Susan Owen's Jean-Luc consistently going over the jumps. We tried moving him closer, which seemed to work to some degree, but that was causing other issues. It's troublesome, mostly because there doesn't seem to be a rhyme or reason for when he does it. Sometimes it's when the pass is close, but other times he's done it as start dog. Sometimes he does it with the jumps at 11 inches, but he also did it at 9 inches. The good news is that we have two months to concentrate on it. We're thinking we can get Jeep available as an emergency backup by then too.

To complicate the weekend a little more, Cody tore his pad during our second match Sunday and is out of commission for a while. Fortunately, Sure Shots had a dog they ran with us that allowed us to keep racing.

Below is a video shot by Susan Owen during a race Saturday.

Sunday Practice

The last practice before the next tournament! We started out running the Speeding Sheepdog team and it was a struggle. With only two more tournaments before the Championships (now that September's was cancelled), we have our work cut out. Wisp and Cody seemed to be doing okay, although both were doing low or three legged turns. It's also hard to judge whether dogs are dropping the ball early because of the short runback or whether there is something we need to work on. Zio was staying lower than I want on the box, so we put the jump board in for him. Unfortunately, the ball got loaded on the wrong side for him on the next run and his turns went to hell for a few runs after that... stabbing, hitting the jump board with his back leg, etc... Fortunately, we did a couple up close and he ended the session doing a perfect turn. We tried something new with JL to keep him in the lane, so we'll see if it works. Connie's job was to cover the ball if he tried to go around and Susan Owen stood off to the side ready to correct him if he went around. Sure enough, he tried to go around the jumps on the first run and I think it was a rude awakening for him. The next few times, he tried to go around the left side (away from Susan), but Connie blocked him from the ball. He started hesitating at the first jump after that because he thought he was going to get corrected, so we pulled everyone away and he did the rest of his runs great. We may have to remind him a few times and see if we can make it permanent.

I plan on work Zio on the box a few more times to get him up on the box and then see if we can get back to running consistently at the tournament.

Another Week

We're back to running a few practice turns in the backyard after work again. It's still stupid hot, so three or four turns is about the limit. I'm using a bar from an agility jump at an angle to guide him to the right side of the box (away from the ball), but I've put the jump board back in to push him higher on the box. We'll keep at this until we head to the next tournament in a week.

TV Star Zio!

Zio and I, along with Susan Owen, will be guests on a local television show called Dog Talk. We will be talking flyball and Zio will help demonstrat a box turn in the studio. I provided the host a bunch of videos from the last year or so, so there will be occasional cuts to "highlight" video while we drone on about flyball. I'll post a link to the show that can be viewed online once it airs!