British Flyball Championships 2011

Posted on August 24, 2011 by Leanne

Summer days. Love the Champs. I don’t care that they’re not whichever competition you* think is better. I appreciate these Championships for what they are, which is a fun, competitive, and noisy tournament full with teams from every corner of the British Isles. Also, nowhere else would you get 200 people willingly dressing up in all kinds of bizarre costumes and dancing like idiots all evening, from tiny babies to 80-yr-olds. Agility just doesn’t have that kind of willingness to let go.

Kim was running in Hawk Owlers on Friday, seeded bottom of Division 31 and eventually coming 2nd. Sad that we didn’t win, but it was a good effort and Kim ran her socks off. She was tired by the last race of the day, due to the ground and the fact she was height dog and so had run every single leg, but she tried her heart out like she always does.

Dylan and Mollie were on the same team on Saturday, in Division 26. The team ran amazingly, very tough racing and coming back from 2-legs down on a couple of occasions. So proud of all of them for coming 1st, I can’t think of a bunch of dogs who deserve it more. Mollie is 12, Buffy is 10, Dylan has worked through many issues, Bailey is ever-reliable and ever-speedy and we would be lost without her, Biba has come from running into things to actually running up and down, and Ronnie has embraced his new team without batting an eyelash.

From my own perspective, this is Dylan’s first Divisional win at the Championships. He always tries and he doesn’t always get the credit for that, but he also has to overcome a lot of anxiety to flyball, so I’m very proud of him for this.

Mollie has won every time she has competed, in 2007, 2009, 2010 and 2011. She will be 13 yrs old for 2012 so we don’t know if she’ll be back to defend her title, but we’ve been saying that every year since we started. Either way, she’s amazing.

Ghost Owlers, our top team, ran in Division 9 on Sunday and came away with a 2nd. Proud of them as well, and really looking forward to where this team goes in the next year, especially with a handful of new dogs waiting in the wings.

Looking forward to next year already.

*Non specific “you”. Seemed to hear lots of generic grumping on this topic this year, which I just thought was a shame.

Flyball Training

Posted on July 24, 2011 by Leanne

We worked very hard with Dylan at training this week. He is getting more confident changing into Roi, but he’s not foot perfect. Neither am I; it’s very hard to work on perfecting the change when Dylan sometimes “flinches” (throws in an extra short stride just before the line). I’m between 1-3ft off on my changes, so we have work to do yet. Since Norah wasn’t at training, Dylan also hasn’t had chance to work into her and I foresee this being our biggest problem.

We did a lot of box work as well and Dylan ran with a stride regulator in, which makes an immediate and hugely positive impact on his turn. I get lazy with including it, but since it works very well for Roi as well, the stride regulator will be making a more constant appearance in training.

Kim and Mollie both looked great. It looks like – for the first time! – the girls will be in seperate teams at the Champs. Mollie just runs so much better over 9″, and at her age it makes a big difference to her consistency. Because of injuries amongst some of our other dogs, Kim is now the height dog for the bottom team, but if we do get one or two of our other height dogs back, she’ll be advantaged by running over lower anyway. Mollie can’t really run 12″ all day anymore and so we can’t risk that she might have to.

Very complicated team structuring but that’s the way it’s had to roll this time around! Next year we will have a whole bunch of different dogs anyway, with our babies coming up and our older dogs very close to retirement now. I’ve been saying this for ages but that’s how it will go!

Best of luck to everyone at the European Championships this week, especially Katie and Jet, and the rest of the High Flyers teams!

Osmaston Flyball

Posted on July 3, 2011 by Leanne

I’m not sure how to blog about this tournament – I have lots of fragmented memories and no clear thoughts! I didn’t wear shoes all weekend, it was really hot, my dogs were great. That’s about all I can coherantly put together.

Mollie ran well, but we tried to keep her doing as little as possible. It was too hot and she’s too crazy. Luckily we had 6 dogs on Saturday and so could replace her as soon as she started to flag. We also kept her from running as stand-by lead dog by letting Kim do it. Kim takes her role as lead dog extremely seriously, but we were pretty awesome. I think Kim would have been a great lead dog in her day, but she’s always been a height dog and it would simply have been too tiring. Now she’s not always the height dog, but she’s 10, and so it’s still not an option apart from these odd occasions when she can be the sub-sub-lead. The team finished 3rd and ran 21.54s.

Dylan ran in a four dog team over 14″. I hate that we did this, if I’m honest. We had no idea that it was going to be so hot even a few days ago, and we didn’t expect to be as short on dogs as we ended up being. But we were very very lucky, in that it was slightly cooler today, we had a lot of 3-leg races, and the dogs are all experienced so we could skip the full warm-ups etc that we normally do. I am grateful that (as a team) we were prepared to forfeit the races had any of the dogs shown any signs of overheating, but I wish we hadn’t had to put them in a position where that was possible to begin with. We won the division and I think the fastest time was 19.38 (we desperately need a height dog!).

Remember: Thatched cottages and silvered church. Running barefoot, hard ground, cropped grass. Sun on shoulders, faces and between toes. Sharing the pool with Dyl. Sitting and filming the changes for Flyers. Minding the stall. Walking round the duck pond, pub.

Sunny Day Training

Posted on April 19, 2011 by Leanne

Photos from our Saturday training session. I only had 10mins to sit down and take some photos, so not very many and not a wide variety. I actually don’t mind being busy at flyball, it’s more productive when we are constantly working, the dogs and handlers get more from it and I walk away happier. Sometimes it would be nice to have a week off from picking up the slack though.

These photos make me a little melancholy; times are changing, some for the good and some for the bad, and I am worried that we will lose more than we gain for having a settled team. I am not sure that everyone involved in the decision making process is aware of that, I think some people make assumptions about other people’s intentions without actually knowing. Maybe I do as well, and so I hope I’m wrong this time. It doesn’t help that I’ve been re-reading our old results pages, being reminded of our past adventures has really made me wonder where we are going now.

Must remember that flyball is a cyclical game, what goes around comes around. Kim is never worried about this kind of thing. She has a ball so she smiles.

This is a very cryptic-clue kind of post, but I am feeling introspective this week, and a little bit sad. See the rest of the photos here: http://flic.kr/s/aHsjqwYksL

Winter Season Review

Posted on April 12, 2011 by Leanne

I spent a couple of hours on Monday reviewing the videos from the weekend, as I always do, but also reviewing the videos from the winter series as a whole. That’s why it took me a couple of hours rather than the usual 15mins. Huge thank yous to my lovely mother for standing and filming almost every single run this winter so I can do this (and for driving and keeping me company generally, actually).

The biggest conclusion is that Dylan’s contacts are looking dramatically slower than a couple of months ago. I initially wondered if this might be something that has been gradually happening, and I just haven’t noticed until now. So I sat and watched and watched and watched. All our 2010 (indoor) runs have fast contacts, right through to Wyre in December. Then we had a month off, no training due to Christmas and the snowcalypse, and from January … slower. So, for the next couple of training sessions we’ll be focusing solely on working and rewarding contacts to try and rebuild that speed, which is what we did before the winter season. I’m kicking myself for not noticing sooner and working on it immediately, but I had kind of put Dyl’s contacts to one side and worked on his waits and jumping recently. I cannot do this with him, I have to continuously work on everything simultaneously.

I also have to work the course better and get in front more. The courses we do well on, I am racing him and front crossing. I only saw one course where I used a rear cross effectively and as the best option, the others were me being cautious or lazy. I also have to give more, if I want Dylan to run at 100% I should be giving that too … even on the courses I don’t like or find boring.

It is nice watching my first couple of runs with Jet to the latest ones. We’ve made a lot of progress this winter, her contacts are much better (even her slow Aframe is quicker!) and we’re generally working to the same wavelength now. She’s such an honest, smart and powerful little girl; I will miss her happy shrieking first thing in a morning. I’d love to try and get her up to Grade 5 over the summer but I think Katie probably wants her back now, they have a busy flyball schedule lined up!

Also, my bum is enormous in all these videos and I do not thank my mother for managing to prominently feature it so often. Hopefully it will shrink magically for all the summer season videos. Can’t believe we’re back outdoors in 2 weeks!