I ran my dogs in their very first flyball tournament this weekend at Wags for Wishes, a fund raiser for the Make-A-Wish foundation, and it was FUN!!! And now follows a blatant brag, because I'm VERY proud of my girl.
I just started training my dogs for flyball about 2 months ago, Dax has been to 6 or 7 lessons now and Cali has attended 2. Dax has been doing really well, so we decided to put him on the team roster so he could do some practice recalls/runs in a trial environment and see how he did. Make sure he's not distracted by all the commotion that you just can't replicate in a training environment The environment was no problem for him, he remained focused on task, but his turn off the box and back into the first jump isn't solid yet, so after running him in 3 or 4 warm-ups we decided to put him up. Go back to training, work it some more, and bring him out another day.
On Sunday the team was running as a pick-up team, because we didn't have enough club dogs. So we "borrowed" a BC, Golden, and their handlers. We also put Cali on the roster so she could do some recalls over the jumps, just to get used to the atmosphere. She's been attacked a few times, so sometimes stresses in a "dog dense" environment, especially if it appears the other dogs are out of control, which kind of describes flyball LOL. She has a lot of training in other arenas, but has only been to training twice for flyball, and we had just been doing recalls over the jumps, going over the jump to get a dead ball, and started luring her through the box turn. We started off running 3 team dogs and the borrowed BC, with Cali doing a few recalls. In our first race, one of our team dogs was injured. So the Golden started to fill in. She was having an off day (it happens to the best of us) and we weren't completing very many runs. After 3 races (is the group of 3-4 legs called a race, or is that a heat and the legs are races?) the BC owner got frustrated and left. The Golden handler also wanted to pull her dog. Which meant it was time to see if Cali could step up to the plate. We did a few warm ups so she would realize when I told her to retrieve, the ball was always down in the box, and then ran in our first race. Not only did she "step up", she had TONS of fun doing it. Since she'd never run the entire course, we had not done any passing yet. We put her in the start position, so she would only have to pass coming out of the jump, not going into it. I'm so proud of my girl, she only messed up ONE time. I messed up a few more than that, with bad starts. Guess my dog is better than me, what else is new . At first she was just doing a retrieve over jumps, she likes to retrieve so it was fun. But after a few runs she started to get into the excitement of it all, and barked and jumped around like an idiot. I think we actually won the majority of our races that I ran Cali in, although the wins didn't count since we were a pickup/exhibition team. I'm not sure what her times were in the first few races, I didn't think to look, but by the end of the day she was running 5.0-5.2 with slow starts and not much of a box turn, just hit the box, grab the ball, and run back. Cali ended up the day with 285 pts and a new TF. All the team dogs earned their TF's this weekend, and two of them earned the TF-1.
Now back to training to teach her a proper swimmers turn for the box.
Well, Cali did better than Yentos on his 2 previous competition. No problem with focussing at the lane, he never takes a look at the opponents team (something that is sometimes a problem with the BCs) but jumping all the jumps is a different one. I think that he completed only 5 or 6 runs that day (we call a heat 3 or 5 runs) but each time he is the star of the finals. He never misses on the final heat.
This year we just want to have fun and train our dogs in competition environment since we started with a nearly brand new team don't have enough dogs yet to make 2 teams so we don't train on 2 lanes.
Next year we really want to compete. But for now we enjoy ourselves and we have become real friends and after the competition we always have a lot to eat: spaghetti borderlaise, cavalier king charles made in 4 different ways and goulash with terv balls.
Saskia
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He is your friend, your partner, your defender, your dog. You are his life, his love, his leader. He will be yours, faithful and true, to the last beat of his heart. You owe it to him to be worthy of such devotion.
I have some photos my son took, just have to get them downloaded off the camera and uploaded onto the WWW, then I'll post them here. It's nice to have a kid who is actually quite good with the camera, he took some very good shots of the team. Unfortunately he was using the "cheap" one so the focus on some might not be the best, but next time I'll give him my good camera.
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The environment was no problem for him, he remained focused on task, but his turn off the box and back into the first jump isn't solid yet, so after running him in 3 or 4 warm-ups we decided to put him up. Go back to training, work it some more, and bring him out another day.
. At first she was just doing a retrieve over jumps, she likes to retrieve so it was fun. But after a few runs she started to get into the excitement of it all, and barked and jumped around like an idiot. I think we actually won the majority of our races that I ran Cali in, although the wins didn't count since we were a pickup/exhibition team. I'm not sure what her times were in the first few races, I didn't think to look, but by the end of the day she was running 5.0-5.2 with slow starts and not much of a box turn, just hit the box, grab the ball, and run back. Cali ended up the day with 285 pts and a new TF. All the team dogs earned their TF's this weekend, and two of them earned the TF-1.
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