Too Hot To Handle III

[omnipoodle]

Our flyball tournament the weekend before last was great!  I was afraid that Faith would not remember how to play flyball because we haven't been going to practices, but she raced nearly as well as she did in York.  We had single dog racing on Friday night after setting up (which involved vast quantities of duct tape), and I signed Faith up to race by herself with no opponent, so she was the only dog in the ring.  Since she had not seen a flyball lane for awhile, I really wanted her to succeed, which she did--no bobbling of the ball.  On Saturday she was on a team called Red Dogs & Poodles (lame!) which consisted of Bliss, Oliver, Bentley (the toy poodle), Faith, and Joy.  Faith and Joy shared a spot--Faith ran three heats of every race and Joy ran two.  We raced one team with a lab running anchor who thought about crossing on Faith.  The heat after that, Faith forgot the ball, which I think happened because she was watching the lab.  That was the only real mistake she made on Saturday.  On Sunday she was on Locomotion (it was two one-day tournaments instead of one two-day tournament, so the teams changed), and she had one mistake when Bliss bobbled and had to be resent, and Lynda did not give Faith a wide enough pass.  Faith was surprised to see a dog coming at her (she doesn't have much experience running in a slot other than anchor) and spit the ball.  Then on one other race I thought she spit the ball on the way back at the box end, but Candy (who was boxloading) and Eric (who was watching from the sidelines) told me that she just did not get a good grip on the ball and it slipped out when she tried to hold it better.  Before the last race of the weekend, Bentley decided that he was done racing so Lynda put Bette the cocker in.  This meant that the jumps were two inches higher, and since Joy is ancient, Faith got to run all five heats in the last race--and got her first ever 125 point race!  Not only was I thrilled about her first successful full-time race, but I was very pleased that she was not at all bothered passing Bette.  She's been doing an awesome job passing Bentley.  I think that she might still look at a large dog, but she completely ignores the small dogs.  Candy said she was doing great box turns, and she also said that Faith races the other dog back.  Woohoo!  I'm not sure how many points she earned, but I'm hoping it was more than 300.  We had a few heats where someone else messed up, and I'm terrible at keeping track.

Unfortunately the photographer did not take good pictures of her.





I have been remiss in updating journal with our training progress this week, but I'll make an entry later.