Tag Archives: BFA

BFA Committee Nominations

  By Leanne | March 18, 2011 - 5:42 pm | Flyball
Leave a comment

Who are you going to vote for? Are you even going to vote?

This post isn’t going to address any of the candidates directly as I don’t think that’s fair, I’m just going to make a wishlist of what I hope to see, as my voting slip came through the post today. It hasn’t been opened yet, and I haven’t read the candidates “vote for me” bits on the BFA website (or FB or wherever else!). But here’s what I’m hoping will be in there:

  • Someone who talks about flyball; what they do now, where they want the sport to go, why they think their idea is a good idea. I don’t care what you do in your non-flyball life unless it’s relevant. I can give or take judging experience.
  • I would love to hear someone say that they either do other dog sports, are involved in training non-flyball dogs, or are something to do with canine health and welfare. I think I’m probably holding out too much hope that one, but I think a broader dog (sport) knowledge can often be the catalyst for new ideas and can get rid of some of the out-dated or “traditional” bits of flyball.
  • Someone who runs with a fast (sub-20s) team. I’m sorry to all the over 20s teams out there, but I want to see someone who is up-to-date with the best training methods around at the moment, and if your top team isn’t running under 20s then you aren’t doing it right. I can’t think of an excuse for that one. Likewise, I don’t care how long you’ve been flyballing for, because for many people that doesn’t mean anything. I know people who’ve been flyballing for 10 years (who started out with me) who know bugger all. I know people who’ve been flyballing for 2-3 years who I will happily say are better trainers than I am. (Europeans experience is an added bonus).

I really don’t expect anyone to meet all those criteria! The final (and admittedly the most elusive and subjective) thing is that if I’ve met any of these candidates, they’d better have been nice. I’m not going to vote for someone who has been a sore loser or an obnoxious winner, or who has been rude or acted childishly to either myself or someone on my team. Those people are very rare in flyball, thankfully, so I’m not expecting any of them to be up for election!

Gap Farm February 11

  By Leanne | February 24, 2011 - 6:25 pm | Dylan, Flyball, Jet, Kim, Mollie
1 Comment

Excellent flyballing, some very good racing.

Dylan was on brilliant form, the specialised training we’ve been doing recently has been hugely and noticably beneficial for him and a few of the other dogs. It was very cool to see real results so quickly! His boxturn wasn’t brilliant, he is coming away much sharper now rather than turning wide, but he isn’t executing the swimmer’s turn as he should be.

Dylan was also very confident as he was running with his best girls Kim and Jet, and his old Labrador friends Buddy and Lucy. All dogs he feels very comfortable with! Kim wasn’t quite on her usual form, I’m beginning to think that the Gap Farm matting just doesn’t suit her, she never seems to run at her best there. She’s unusual in that respect as I think most teams have found that their teams run equal or better times on the matting. Kim has always prefered very hard ground though, like sports halls or sun-baked turf, so maybe I shouldn’t be too surprised. She brought the hurdle height down for the others though, so it was worth keeping her in that team.

Mollie unfortunately drew the short straw. We knew she was going to be unfit and really needed the spot in the bottom team, who ended up running in the second arena. It was more dimly lit than the main arena and although it was perfectly fine for most dogs, Mollie really struggled to see. It was exactly the kind of light she has the most difficulty with, a kind of muted half-light with deep shadows but no real bright spots. She ended up interfering a few times simply because she lost my mother, and she kept mistaking various non-ball objects for balls which caused some chaos as well. We are just going to have to pull her if the team ends up in that arena again, although I think by this time next year it’s unlikely Mol will be running indoors at all as her eyesight will have deteriorated further by then.

Next flyball at the end of March, plenty of time to get Mollie back up to fitness and hopefully work a little more on Dylan’s box.

October Rotherdrax Flyball

  By Leanne | October 25, 2010 - 5:23 pm | Dylan, Flyball, Kim, Mollie, Photos
Leave a comment

I am already regretting entering anything over the winter. I always forget about the cold, and the dark, and the cold.

Kim was running with the second team, Hawk, and after a small series of minor disasters our lovely 5-dog team was down to an equally-lovely but slightly unpredictable 4 dog team. Kim and Brooke are both 12″ height dogs, and both can get a little tired running all day, and our lead-lurcher Chip is a lurcher, and he gets a little bored of flyball sometimes. However, with one full height dog gone, everyone was in and we actually had a really great days racing! We finished 1st in Div 6.

Dylan was running with the first team, Barneys, and we had to switch the order around unexpectedly after our first warm-up. Dylan was reassigned on the front, which makes me pull all kind of squirmy faces. I’m not great on the lights, but I’m even worse with Dylan! Dylan has issues approaching the first hurdle, and has started stuttering into the jump quite badly. We worked out his stride pattern and eventually worked out that he must go from 35ft into a dog he trusts, otherwise he stutters. This does not work when we go lead, because Dyl needs to run from 37ft to hit the start at the right time! This completely wrecked his stride and even when we moved back to 35ft in the afternoon he was all over the place.

His box was noticably tighter in the afternoon, he tends to go very wide in the morning (I don’t know why … ) but he’s always run better in the afternoon anyway. So now the most frustrating thing with Dylan is that he’s running at around 5s or just under over 14″ with this stupid stuttering start. Hopefully next time Norah will be back and we won’t have to go lead again! We finished 1st in Div 4 anyway, which was a bit of a happy ending.

Mollie is very happy to be at Drax!

Mollie was in the third team, Marsh, and had a great time running lead over 9″ all day. She’s completely mental. We struggled a bit in this division as we were on a declared time, and couldn’t run our fastest four dogs as they would break out! I think the team finished 3rd overall, but it was excellent racing.

Kim got her Gold Award (15,000points). She’s the 431st dog to get this award in the history of the BFA, and the 85th Crossbreed to get it. She actually got the points for it way back in June, but the BFA are so far behind on uploading the points that the awards are just starting to get presented now. Typically, this is the time of year when people don’t want to stay for presentations, and really don’t want presentations to take long when they do stay! It was freezing cold yesterday, but we had a few other dogs getting big awards as well, plus our successful day rosette-wise. Traditionally Owlers give a little bag of goodies to the dogs and handlers getting their big awards, and Kim got a lovely “gold” toy that she promptly ragged in all the dirt, a gold trophy and some very smelly chicken treats. And I got a baby box of Celebrations, so everybody wins!

Actually, the two trophies Kim has from her Silver and now Gold awards are two of my favourite trophies, they get pride of place on the shelf. They represent how brilliant a flyball dog Kim is, even if she isn’t the fastest singles dog; they represent all the cold and the rain and the baking hot days, the grass, turf, mud, rubber matting. The sitting in the rain while the lights go haywire, again. Running in every position into every dog every single time. Never running off whils we set up campsite, mugging people for food, helping put the tents down again. Being incredibly noisy, silly and excited, but still doing every run perfect every time with 100% heart. The 15,000 points doesn’t necessarily mean that, but the trophies from our team do.

Redcar Flyball

  By Leanne | September 28, 2010 - 1:49 pm | Dylan, Flyball, Kim, Mollie
Leave a comment

The girls ran well, we broke our seed time again and clocked a 20.15 in the afternoon. Mollie was slightly off her normal form, I think Saturday took her edge away. She gets so excited and then exhausts herself by getting all wound up and silly when she’s not running. She and Kim still ran line-to-line 4.9-5.1s all day. I am especially pleased with Kim, she ran all day as she was the height dog and she clocked a 4.99 in the afternoon. No idea what she’s up to, getting faster at her age! It was really good racing though, and we finished 3rd in the Division.

Dylan’s team also finished 3rd. Dylan was not running at his best. He was running with the top-team dogs again as they were missing two of the usual dogs from that team, and he wasn’t happy. As soon as I tried to do a proper change into Norah, Dylan started stuttering into the first jump, slamming on the breaks. My assumption is that this was to avoid Norah, because on wide changes he wasn’t stuttering. I’m getting a little bit frustrated with his stuttering into the first hurdle – it’s something that has only developed this summer and it varies depending on the competition.

What made this more frustrating was that Dylan’s box was lovely! He had a few mishaps after our new boxloader dropped a ball as he was approaching the box, which confused him no end, but by the next race he was back to neat, tight turns. It’s probably the best boxwork I’ve seen him doing all summer, but instead of improving his times, he was slower due to the run-in. He clocked 5.1s consistently all day (including changeovers, not line to line), which isn’t good enough. He clocked a 4.81 in singles the day after his first ever competition, and that is the standard I have been holding him to ever since.

Windswept on the Stray

Luckily we went to the beach afterwards. Despite the windswept grey sky and the wild grey sea, Redcar is always worth the trip because of the Stray.

Wild Grey Sea at Redcar

Bakewell Flyball

  By Leanne | September 13, 2010 - 12:19 pm | Dylan, Flyball, Kim, Mollie
Leave a comment

Back at Bakewell; for a showground I hadn’t visited before this year, I seem to have spent a lot of time there this summer! It was lovely this weekend, masses and masses of empty space for the exercise area.

We had a bit of a disaster leading up to the tournament when two dogs came down with Kennel Cough, so we had to withdraw one team and remix the others rather drastically. Because it was so last minute, some people weren’t able to switch days as well, so we really did have a very odd mix of teams!

Dylan was running with his usual teammates Bailey and Buddy, and then Jet and George from the top team. Like all the teams, we struggled a bit in the morning to hit the times we were expecting; the grass was very long and damp in the arena and the dogs just couldn’t get their footing. We also didn’t have a lead dog for this team, so Buddy and Dylan shared duties. Dylan actually did reasonably well, but he looks up at me rather than forward towards the lane, so our starts were a bit off at times. Thankfully we won’t have to do it again! Either way, we won the division and just had great racing all day, lots of fun.

Kim and Mollie were on Sunday, with a complete mixed bag of dogs. Kim was running as height dog and as anchor, as we had three dogs who all prefer to run lead dog. The team actually ran really well, but we made a few too many mistakes and lost three of six races (in a 7-team division). We were the only team to beat the fastest team in the division, which was fantastic racing and pushed us to our best time of 20.90s.

End of the summer season means we’re reassessing all our teams and trying to get singles times on all of the dogs; Dylan was hovering just under 5s all weekend, but I’m fairly confident in saying he usually runs a bit quicker than that. He didn’t appreciate the ground and he also wasn’t happy having a strange boxloader, it makes a big difference to his turn. Kim was just over 5s, and ran that all day, despite being over her full height and in a 7-team div. Mollie varied between 4.8s – 5.2s, even over 12″ and not running lead, where we know she runs faster. Somehow our oldest dog is also the fastest?!