First flyball tournament with the new team :)

It's been awhile since I've posted! We had our first flyball tournament since December and first ever with our new team. It was lots of fun, despite the 8 hour drive. We got a new van. It's so lame and so awesome at the same time. Everything fit with no issue and we were are very comfortable, especially Finley. It's really the perfect size for us! I am disappointed that it's white, but am not interested in paying lots of money to repaint it. We just have to accept that it's really ugly and enjoy it. As soon as we finish setting it up, I'll post photos.

So, we pretty much had to run Pax because we needed to enter one team into the regular division and he was one of the 4 that didn't run in the last 90 days. Ben ran him all weekend and did a great job with him. He will be running him from now on....he gets a lot less stressed about trying to get the tug back from him! His first warmup sucked. He went wide off the box and launched over the prop that was there to make him take 3 strides off the box! But then, I was surprised when he ran all 3.7s and took 3 strides and box turn looked great during racing. Then I was even more shocked when he started posting 3.6s including a 3.63. There was one race that was full of false starts and he didn't look as great toward the end of that, so we pulled him for the rest of the day. He ran all but one race on Sunday as well and never ran higher than low 3.8s! 90% of the time his turn held and he took 3 strides off the box!!  We have since practiced and are still figuring out the perfect props to use to get this all to stick. I'd love to see consistent 3.6s from him.

Here is Pax at practice after the tournament this week

I learned from watching this that I need to take out the stride regulator out when he is on the way in to make his striding more even...I am happy with his turn and striding on the way out. 

Indy and Goose ran well and will continue to be on our A team until we switch things around again. Pax isn't ready for that commitment and Raven probably won't debut until later this summer. Spy did so much better than expected. I was pretty worried about her focus issues. She still can't really run head to head with another dog doing recalls, or at least since the last time I tried! She had a little setback with teething and tugging.  She was so awesome at the tournament. I did short recalls with her alongside the run back area during racing warmups and she stayed 100% focused on me. I also played "Look At That" with her on the side of racing, which helped a lot. She thoroughly enjoyed introducing herself to every human and dog that would listen.

I finally got some video of Spy. She is almost 6 months now!

Unless we get snowed out we will go to a scrimmage in the morning and then we will be teaching flyball class and team practice! Big day!

As far as upcoming events..I am going to try to go to 3 more tournaments before my human baby is born. This includes one that is one week before my due date. We will see how it goes....