End Of Summer Slam 2013 And The Amazing Squeewok!

Ermagherd! Flyball!

Two weekends ago was the End of Summer Slam tournament held in Monroe, Michigan. This marked 2 years in the sport for Pan as she debuted in singles and pairs at Monroe two years ago before her team debut at CanAm. This year we debuted Cocoa in singles, pairs, and we even gave her some points with 3 heats in our last race Sunday after she finally settled into her job and quit scaring us about crossing over!

Photo by Gerry Bradshaw

I suppose I should back up.

Saturday Cocoa ran singles against another dog on our team, Hershey. She did awesome! Posted mostly 6.5 seconds after she remembered that the jumps are important and should be all taken in order. Lol.

Photo by Gerry Bradshaw
WHERE IS YOUR BALL, COCOA??

Then she moved on to pairs. We ran Trophy and Cocoa together and called it SWAT Secret Weapon. We were running against two little terriers and for some reason Cocoa did NOT like the little JRT she was running against and she crossed twice to chase. She has never before shown interest at practice at chasing, so we decided to hold back and let her run after the Jack, named 'Shorty' was finished so to not encourage chasing in the lanes and to not scare the dickens out of Shorty. No more errors. She ran about 7 seconds passing.

Photo by Gerry Bradshaw

Fast forward to Sunday. Ran pairs against our team first, so again no errors in crossing over. Then we have singles against... Shorty. Of course. Since Cocoa was still really interested in Shorty we let shorty run then we ran Cocoa. A judge, who is notoriously mean to certain members of our team and can be a bit... overbearing... shall we say? Approached us outside later to lecture us on why we should have pulled her from singles and put cocoa back in preflight and didn't understand (since he hadn't been there on the pervious day to watch racing) that Cocoa does just fine with our team in the other lane And in preflight you can only have your team in the other lane! The crossing is new and to prevent ruining the confidence of another new dog we held her. I don't regret this decision.

Paris against Shorty and a whippet was next. Talked to the team about their order. Shorty was running first against Trophy and the whippet's owner said her dog is also having some crossing issues, so to just run Cocoa and it would be fine, her whippet was not aggressive to other dogs. Did I mention that the judge who talked to us outside put himself on our race? So it was a little bit of pressure. Whatever, we are SWAT. We've got SWAGR. lets do it. Shorty was having problems completing. Shorty stopped halfway down the lane. Trophy ran and we let Cocoa go..... and she didn't cross!!! 4 good heats!

Cocoa's last pairs race was also against Shorty and she didn't cross there either! Good girl Cocoa!

So we decided to let her have her team debut since she appeared to get her crossing under control and she was focused.

Photo by Gerry Bradshaw

First heat we had a bad pass by our second dog, she reran but i think our final time was over 35 seconds, so no points.

Second heat Cocoa dropped her ball just before the last jump, we didn't rerun her.

Third heat - CLEAN!  25 points for Cocoa!

The best thing about the weekend was watching everyone else's reactions to Cocoa running.  So many people stopped to watch her run. So many people asked to pet her and see her because she's so small and fluffy.

Cocoa then proceded to practically die on the way home.  She was so tired she sprawled out on Jbiz's lap and didn't move.  We even poked her and she didn't move.  She was beat after two days of a lot of racing for a 5 pound ragamuffin!

As for the other teams:
Variety was seeded in division 1. Demo and Jbiz laid down some good start times for her first time running him.  Pan and I running third on that team after Malley eventually dialed in our passes, Bandy running anchor.  We banged out a couple 18.9's with that line up, which is that fastest time we have posted while any of my dogs have been running with this team.  If we had had a knowledgeable pass caller all the time we may have managed a few low 18's but, really, we run to run clean and rack up the points.  We don't want to lose the points on bad passing.

Our Standard team came in first place, but they ran against mostly pick up teams which couldn't place. We don't run for the placements anyway!

Photo by Gerry Bradshaw

shoulder parrot/backseat driver

I was most proud of Demo this weekend as not only did he have different people handling him (Jbiz ran him most of the weekend, and then a teammate's husband ran him in the last race while Jbiz was running Cocoa) but he also stopped double hitting on the box.  his turn looks pretty darn good right now.

Pan and Demo earned their next titles, which i wasn't expecting, so that was an added bonus!!

On to CanAm!!!

We've Got S.W.A.G.R.

Gosh, I don't even know where to being on this weekend.

Tournament in Sandusky.  Camped with my besties: Jbiz, Matty, and my sister. First day was nice, started out super humid but cooled by the afternoon and light sprinkles at the end of the day really helped cool things down... only after racing was done and Jbiz and I went to shower it started to DOWNPOUR.  We had to walk through water above our ankles to get back to base camp.  Then the path we all walked in teh grass to our tent turned into a mud slide.  and water seeped between the tarp and the bottom of the tent.

We moved Tash and Pan into the back of the Vue for the night (it eventually stopped raining) and Matt took Demo into the bed of the truck.  Jbiz and I kept the rest of the crated dogs in the tent because we both have cots to sleep on.

It was just... hell.  My hell is not on fire, it's flooded and muddy.

We had to carry the dogs in and out of the tent to prevent them from getting mud every were.

And in the process I got a cut on my big toe by the nail that I believe is infected from walking thru the muck for two hours in bare feet.

Ok, now on to the dog's performances.

Had problems with the box on Friday and all the dogs bobbling.  Slowed down the mechanism, and they did slightly better.

Starts with Pan were pretty good.  Had some bad ones, but for the most part I kept it under .050 split.  We did get our second perfect start today... but since I saw it and I screamed in celebration Matt (who was box loading) looked at the clock and didn't load a ball for Trophy... lost it on a no finish. oh silly greenie boxloaders. :)

Tasha got some pretty good starts with Pan today too when the lights started making more sense to her.  As did Matt with Demo, although Demo started losing his concentration on the recalls and either couldn't find Matt or was blowing him off.  Not sure which, but it concerns me.

Trophy was his awesomely consistent self, even if Jbiz couldn't get her passes together.

Cocoa debuted in Preflight and totally ROCKED it.  It was pretty hilarious as we got her officially measured and the judge said he would give her 3 inch jumps if he could, lol!  We started working thru her not bringing the ball back over all 4 jumps and not dropping early.  Worked with another dog in the other lane (but not running at the same time, doing box turns while cocoa was running or alternating runs).  Cocoa was slightly distracted, but quickly refocused.  by the 4th preflight run today she was doing full runs and holding the ball all the way thru the end over 7inch jumps (we forgot to take them down to 6 and she'll have to jump 7 anyway for NAFA).

There were just enough wacky problems in the lanes, combined with severe pain today, a sun burn, crankiness from the flood, and sunburn today just sucked and for the first time ever I was really, really really glad to put this flyball weekend in the books.

The Flying Squeewok

This upcoming weekend, one week from today, Cocoa will be making her preflight debut.  I can't believe she's only been in flyball training for just about 3 months...

Today she had her first full run in practice.  Can't wait to see her in action at a tournament setting!!

Video:



Later this week I will be introducing a new feature to this blog.  We're calling it The Noob's Guide to Flyball.  Don't miss it, it's a hilarious look at a friend's first flyball tournament and I'm hoping we can turn his adventures into a book!

Beginner Flyball Class

I'm teaching my first ever beginner's class for our flyball team. Having been in the sport for such a short time made this a very daunting task for me at first, but 3 weeks in and it is going extremely well. And when i don't know what to say, luckily my teammates do (unfortunately some of them like to talk over me, but i'm letting it go because they've been doing this longer than i have).

Week 1 we did a lot of talking and demonstrating, then we practiced restrained recalls.  The most important part of the lesson being "don't look at your dog, RUN!"  Everyone did very well, and we added one jump before a long run out for the dogs to start learning jump sequences to a reward.

Week 2 we had lost one student due to medical reasons, but gained another.  So our class roster is this:
1. Cocoa, the Havapomesian Squeewok
2. Salli, a Koolie/Coolie
3. Solomon, GSD
4. Layla, Lab X Cattledog mix (like Trophy! only she has very little ticking isolated to her back toes)

But, Cocoa and Salli were the only two at class this week.  We made a lot of progress with Salli who learned to sequence all 4 jumps down and back VERY quickly.  Cocoa struggled with this, but she excelled at turns.  For this class and for homework I had them just teach the dogs to "bounce" over a prop, the goal being to teach them to quickly go and come back over a low jump.  Cocoa did so well the next day her mom asked for some one on one help (since she's a friend of mine) and we started teaching her an actual box turn.

After the class Jbiz and Salli's owner stayed for our practice so we let them run our experienced dogs (Jbiz will probably be running Trophy at an upcoming tournament).

Week 3 we had our full class back.  We again worked on jump sequencing, then we started working on turns on the board. Cocoa is phenomenal   We adjusted the props slightly to make sure she was learning to jump up high enough that she would be in a good position to grab the ball.  We also ordered special squishy balls just for her and sent her home with a few to learn to retrieve them and play with them.  Solomon struggled a bit with his long body to understand what we wanted, but he got it in the end.  Layla did very well, and Salli also caught on very quickly.  Then we worked on some jump sequencing again, and ended on some restrained recalls with out jumps to end on a happy note.

Since Cocoa's mom stays for our whole practice, at the end we gated the 4 jumps and worked on motivating her through all four jumps since the distance between the jumps is going to be her biggest difficulty being as she's so small.

During our practice, again Jbiz and Salli's owner stayed so we gave them more practice with running experienced dogs.

Week 4 is this up coming weekend.  We aren't having a full practice, just the class.  But I'm pretty excited to see what these guys do.

The Squeewok

This is Cocoa.

She weighs less than 10 pounds.

She's a super amazing flyball heightdog in the making.

Her mom (whom I call Jbiz) and I are super excited about training her.

She's a Havanese-ish, she looks like a Squirrel X Ewok mix...

She is the Squeewok.

More updates to follow!