We just got back from the December Dogwood Pacecetters tournament. It was a great time and very successful for our team. Pax ran in start again and was way more consistent than in November. His times were all mostly in the low 3.8s with one 3.77. I also figured out how to hold him so that my starts were more consistent. He is a crazy crazy dog. Indy freezes when getting ready to run. She predictably watches the judge until he starts the lights and then she stares intently at the start dog. Pax on the other hand is bucking, barking, foaming and writhing all over the place...and he doesn't like to be held by his back legs. He almost bit me in the face going for his tug. He is serious about tugging. I ran up to the line on every heat, turned my back and ran with the tug dragging behind me and he held his ball every time. He did great. We still need to work on a tighter turn, running in the pack and striding.
Jeff ran Indy again and did a great job with her. She posted some great times with perfect passes by Jeff. Lots of low 3.8s throughout the weekend. She also tried to get away with dropping her ball and got flagged a few times. Naughty girl! Jeff did a good job of working with her during warmup and reminding her to bring her ball.
Goose ran well too. We didn't get a lot of video, but we realized that we need to work on his striding between the box and and the first jump on the way back. He takes two half the time and barely clears the jumps on those runs. Ben had fun pushing his passes and got lots of good ones (and a few flags, 4 to be exact).
We broke our team record with a 16.4 here
And almost broke it here, but Deco dropped his ball. I had a .11 start on this one, so it could have been a 16.2!
I am taking Susan Garretts Recallers 3.0 course. I've just started reading the course material today and need to get started today so I don't get behind. It's going to be a lot of work, but worth it I think. I already see lots of applications for flyball and agility training.
We have a New Years Eve flyball tournament coming up and then we will take a little break for the winter from competing in dog sports and training to give the dogs a mental break. We'll do lots of hiking and conditioning and very little training..after the recallers class I''m sure they will be ready for a break.
I've started thinking about getting Finley a dog to learn dog sports with. Obviously she is waaay too young now, but I'm starting to think about small dog breeds that will be a good pet and a good sport dog. On the list now is rat terrier, toy fox terrier, papillion, boston terrier, silky terrier, podengo. I have a while to decide and may end up getting a rescue, but the only thing that satisfies my obsession with getting more dogs is planning which dogs I might get in the future!
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