Best Tournament to Date!

Zio had his best tournament to date at Sure Shot's Monster Mash tournament held Oct 5th & 6th in Bonham, Texas.  Zio had run sub 4 seconds twice until this last tournament, which is about three years of racing.  He probably added another half dozen to his total!

Lucy has been our regular start dog for the last year, but couldn't make it to this tournament.  That pushed Zio back to running starts again.  He absolutely loves running start, but I hate to put the extra runs on him.  in the first heat Saturday, he kicked it off with a 3.997, which included the .146 second start I handicapped him with.  Zio had several heats that were in the 3.8's wire to wire.  He started Sunday's first heat with a .006 start, but the other lane had an early start.  The judge reset the clocks before they finished, but I calculated it from video as a mid 3.8 second run. 

Overall, his turn wasn't especially pretty, but he ran hard enough to make up for it!  Edit:  Added video of the 3.851 line-to-line run.

Joint Stong Update

So far, so good with the joint supplement powder Zio has been taking.  Although we've curtailed almost every activity that seemed to cause a problem, I haven't seen even a hint of a limp since he starting taking it with his meals about a month ago.  It could just be me, but he seems to be moving easier too.  I guess the real test will be at the championships next week.  Saturday evening, after the first full day of racing, will tell me if it's working.  He's also shed the three extra pounds he had gained over the winter, so he is at his optimal weight again!

Semi-Annual Update?!

It appears I have let this blog slip for another lengthy period without an update.  Zio has been doing much better this year as far as his health is concerned.  He hasn't missed a tournament to date, but he was pretty sore Saturday evening of the last tournament.  He still tends to favor his right rear leg occasionally after abrupt stops while playing, but seems to recover fairly quickly.  We've given up playing backyard frisbee and throwing the ball because he goes 110% until the fence makes him come to a hard stop. 

He was limping a bit a few days before Margarita Mania X at the end of June, which happened to be the first tournament this year he didn't run faster than 4.1 seconds.  I've since put him on a joint supplement (Joint Strong) and I think he's doing better after the first few weeks.  I'm hoping that he'll be good to go for the U-Fli Championships in less than three weeks.  We've gone also gone back to wall turns for a refresher as his turns weren't very good either.  He looked really good in practice last Saturday as I alternated having props or just the box. 

Here's a video of our best run from Margarita Mania against our friends at Sure Shots.  Zio is running second.  It's not his best from the weekend, but as a team.

Racing This Weekend!!!

We're racing again this weekend and it's here in OKC!  I think it will be even more fun since I'm not involved with the setup or running of the tournament this year.  It will be nice to just go and set up the crating area and then head home for dinner and a good night of sleep.  All of the dogs start getting excited when the flyball gear starts getting loaded up, which we did last night.

Zio is ready to go.   He had an issue with a sore between his toes on his back left paw a few weeks ago, but he seems to be leaving it alone now.  It will be a little strange for team No Fear this weekend.  John is on a cruise ship, so TJ is going to run Lucy as start dog.  Hopefully, she'll run okay for him.  We're racing in S2 both days, so it should be a lot of fun!

First Place!!!

We had an awesome weekend of racing at the Great Plains Qualifier on Saturday and the Groovin in Grove tournament on Sunday.  During the Qualifier, we took first place and won every match of the day against some pretty good competition!  Overall, we were 15-2 in the heats during five races that were the best three of five (once a team wins three heats, the race is over).  Our best time Saturday was a 17.3 second heat during the last match of the day against Sneak Attack.

Division 5 Results:

1.  Breakin' Out
2.  4 Dog Flight
3.  Full Speed Ahead

We took first place again on Sunday racing in S2, which included Sure Shots B, Sneak Attack, and Fetchin Frenzi.  We started out winning every head in the first round robin, going 12-0.  We got greedy after that when we had a virtual lock on first place and started pushing it to see if we could get an even faster time.  Needless to say, we raced very sloppy and went 2-7 during the second round robin, but held on for first place again.  We did manage several 17.3 races a few 17.2's with a new best time of 17.238.  We still have a lot of room on passing to improve, so I think we'll get a little faster yet when we all get a solid run.

Zio ran several times in the low 4.0's with tighter passing, but didn't quite hit 3.9 again.  His turn held up reasonably well for him, but I need to work on his striding (if it's possible at this point).  We'll go back to basics in practice now until we race in OKC next month at Burnin' Up Bricktown 2.  It will be nice to be able to stay at home for this one!

Qualifier Excitement!

We are three days away from leaving for Dogs Gone Wild U-Fli Great Plains Qualifier in Grove.  This will be Zio's third Qualifier and the most exciting!  The first one we raced in (with FSA in 2011) was in what is now Division 6.  We were the only D6 team entered that year, so it was really an automatic birth to the Championships.  Last year, we were racing in D5 (still with FSA) at the Qualifier, but Dogs Gone Wild was the only other team competing in that division, so we had an automatic birth into the Championships by running one race (top three advance).

That brings us to this year with Breakin' Out.  We are still in D5, but there are five teams competing for the three positions that will advance.  We are the top seed, followed by Sneak Attack, Dogs Gone Wild, FSA, and 4 Dog Flight.  Racing will mean something this year and I have a lot of confidence in our team.  We ran really good on Saturday in Bonham and I have no doubt that we'll be smooth and consistent in Grove this weekend.  Barring injury, we should make it to Purina Farms in August for the Championships.  We'll be happy to finish in the top three, but a first place ribbon would be sweeter.

That being said, we are really looking forward to Sunday too when we get to race and be competitive with Sure Shots B team, Sneak Attack, and the others in our grouping.  I think it's conceivable to hit the 16's if all four dogs have a great run and pass during the same race.

Geeky

As many can attest, I can get a little geeky analyzing videos.  After watching Zio run during the first races at the last tournament, I did a frame-by-frame analysis to determine he was running 3.9's wire-to wire.  I took that one step further and broke down the video into tenths of a second and compared it to his 3.953 second run in 2011.  Amazingly enough, he was very close to stride for stride, if not slightly ahead.  I've heard you can use the old Windows Movie Maker with some modification to do a split screen.  Now THAT would be cool to compare in slow motion!  I just don't think I want to spend the time to learn how to modify it to use the old WMM that way.  

Great Tournament!

We had a great tournament in Bonham!  Our main goal was to run under 18 seconds at least once to be able to qualify in division 5 at the Qualifer in Grove, OK next month.  Our very first race was a 17.981 with extremely wide passing.  Our best time Saturday was an amazing (for us) 17.286 seconds with room to improve.  Several dogs ended up running personal bests on the team including Maverick (4.212) and Luna (4.402).

Zio ran fairly good all day, although he was running much better in the morning with several runs that were under four seconds wire-to-wire.  His turn got a little lazy as the afternoon wore on, but he did pretty good considering my wide passes.  I ended up pulling him after the second to last race when he broke his dew claw to the quick.  I thought it was worse than it was, but he should be fine for Grove.  Lucy came into heat Saturday, so he ended up not racing again this tournament since we would end up racing for fun on Sunday.

We're In!!!

The U-Fli Board of Directors has approved our request for an exception to enter the Grove Qualifer next month!  Our Qualifier division will be determined by our fastest time this weekend.  We've had some fun with the team trying to predict our best time this weekend and the guesses are all ranging from the low to high 17's.  If so, we are guessing Division 5 along with Dogs Gone Wild, Full Speed Ahead, and 4 Dog Flight. 

This will be the first time since June that I'll get the chance to race Zio myself.  With injuries last year and needing to run Luna, it just hasn't worked out and I miss running him.  I'm glad he's not the start dog anymore too.  I'd rather run fewer races!

Tournament in One Week!

We had our last practice yesterday morning and things are looking good for next weekend!  I think we should be able to get under 18 seconds comfortably.  I'm predicting a weekend best of 17.6 seconds.  Zio is looking good, but I haven't removed any props from his practice routine.  Hopefully his turn will hold.

The real news is whether we will get an exemption from the U-Fli Board of Directors to enter the Grove Qualifier in March.  In double checking our eligibility for the Qualifier, I noticed that our two tournaments prior to the Qualifier also needed to be completed prior to the closing date too!  In asking for clarification, I found out that tournaments run during the 120 day waiting period do not count toward the requirement to compete in two.

I have requested an exemption based on a lack of nearby tournaments we could have competed in after the 120 day waiting period had expired 12/24.  It sounds like it is a formality, but nothing is definite yet.
 

Outdoors!

We took advantage of the nicer weather and practiced outdoors at Wild Horse Park in Mustang, OK Saturday.  We've needed the opportunity to practice team runs with a full runback to get an idea on where each dog needs to start from.  All of the dogs ran great and enjoyed running.  Although we were missing some teammates, it was a lot of fun being outside.

Teegan was the big surprise for me.  He was able to be sent to the box with good turns from 10-15 feet already!  If he keeps this up, he may be ready for pre-flight in a few months!

No Fear!

Well, it's been a long break since my last post here. A lot has happened, but we are really looking forward to a great 2013.  As I alluded to in a previous post, we left Full Speed Ahead along with a close group of friends to create the Breakin' Out Flyball Racing Team.  We now practice on Saturday mornings, which has worked out so much better.  We leave practice and have the whole weekend ahead of us!

I won't go into the details of the split, but I truly feel it was the best thing to do for both clubs.  We will miss our friends that remained with FSA, but look forward to growing our new team.  We are going to remain part of the OKPaws Canine Sports Club, which will help during the transition.  Our new logo is below.  We have t-shirts and hoodies on order, so we'll be styling the new colors in February at Hyper Flight's Barkin in Bonham 4.5 tournament.

Zio had a rough 2012 with injuries, so he and I are both hoping that is a thing of the past.  He missed three tournaments and a frisbee competition due to injury, but it's been good to see him running at practice for the last three months.  I've kept the props consistent on turns, so I'm really hoping that the muscle memory will kick in.  His turns are nearly flawless every time and I would really like to see his times if he continued do them like that in a tournament.  We simulate as best we can in practice, so I'll keep my fingers crossed!  The other good thing is that John's Lucy is going to take over the start dog spot.  I'd rather not have Zio run the extra races and John has been very consistent with good starts.  More to come, but the team lineup will be Lucy, Zio, Maverick, and Luna to start the year.