Friday, November 2, 2012

More Flyballin' Fun!

A few weeks ago I got a call from my team captain. They had a dog pull out of the upcoming tournament in Davisburg MI, would I like to go to fill in?

I didn't really like the facility the first time I went.  There is a minuscule 55 feet of runback, and the way the building in constructed one lane is up practically up against a wall and the first time I went they had up running back into basically a box. Very claustrophobic.  And the first time we went over new years Pan and Harley collided which started my worries about running Pan in the right lane because she looks left to watch the start dog.

Also, Davisburg is 3 1/2 hours away, and since it's indoors most tournaments there are when it's cold out, which means I have to stay in a hotel. Trophy was a total jerk in the hotel at the NYE tournament, he barked and growled alllll night long. I literally slept with my hands clamping him mouth shut. And by slept I mean I got about an hour. Total. All night long.

All of the above flashed through my head, but so did not having to pay a tournament fee. And that this would be a great run through for hoteling with Trophy if we ended up going to the tournament in York, PA in December.

So I went. And I was able to take two dogs.  Trophy, my rock solid dog, and Demo to earn some more points.

I was going to alternate them for two races each day.  And then in the last race on Saturday Demo jumped up for his tug, got his hocks tangled together and took a hard fall on his back legs.  He screamed and came up limping.  I walked him around until he had almost stopped limping, and then put him up and got Trophy.  Two heats into the race our start dog came up limping - she's 11 after all.  Our back up was Demo. Who hadn't raced in that lane and who wouldn't get a warm up.  Amazingly, he did not let me down.  He went out and ran his heart out and didn't mess up. :)  I'm so incredibly proud of him, and Trophy ran so nicely for my teammate.

Hotel was interesting with the boys.  They both curled up on the bed and passed out.  I found an NCIS marathon and did a little reading until my eyes got tired, then I turned off the light. I was going to leave the TV on to help mask the outside noises from Trophy.  Didn't matter. the second I switched out the lights, Trophy woke up growling and prowled the room and wouldn't shut up.  So I locked him in a kennel in the bathroom and Demo and I slept in the bed.

Sunday was similar with only one little bobble.  My teammate was running Trophy in start and I was going to run Demo.  She was late getting to the warmup, so I ran both dogs out and I don't think Trophy knew who he was supposed to go to after his first heat.  I'm passing him with Demo, and when he saw me run up with Demo he turned and tried to rerun. Luckily he didn't crash into anyone on our team, and when he didn't have a ball on his side, he checked out the other lane.  Once we got him back and he she started feeding him cheese he never made another error.

We played the raffle, I wasn't going to since I haven't been lucky yet, but I put in $20, and man-o-man did I come out a winner!  A new x-pen, RV mat, and a $25 gift card to BP!  That gas car proved instrumental to the rest of the evening.  I started out following a teammate home, and she stopped right before the highway and pulled into a BP station.  I almost continued on as I had 3/4 a tank, but since I had that BP card I figured I would also stop and fill up.  Turns out my teammate's breaks had gone out! So i topped off my tank (the card perfectly filled it up) and then the boys and I waited with her.  She has a tracphone, so I gave her my phone to use to call AAA and her husband so she wouldn't use up her minutes. Then I moved stuff around so she and her dog could ride home with us as they had to tow her van 187 miles home.

It took over an hour for the tow truck to get to us, just as my battery died from not running my car for the past hour, so he gave me a jump, and loaded up the van while my teammate and I started home.  I finally got home at 11 after dropping her off.

It was a a great weekend.  I love my team and I'm glad I could be there to help out in more than one way!

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In blog related news, wow! Over 2,000 views to my little blog.  who knew? :)  Thanks for reading!

2 comments:

  1. Sounds like a fun time. Glad Demo didn't actually hurt himself more than just a bit of soreness at the time.

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    1. He's a big baby. He ran into a tree last week in the back yard, like wrapped his whole body around the thing, screamed and came hobbling over to me. I flexed his appendages and no pain responses, but he limped his way to the house and sulked. As soon as I started playing ball with Pan he was fine -no limp whatsoever.

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