The heady mixture of dog hair, dog pee, fritos, doughnut sprinkles, half-drunk sodas, dregs of wine from the night before and dregs of coffee from this morning...the cacophany of dogs on the edge of meltdown and people taking a game we play with dogs far too seriously (and themselves too often on the edge of meltdown), the shriek of the judge's whistle, the snap of the box ejecting a tennis ball...it must be flyball!
It was a real stroke of luck that my November leave, timed to take place during the Muslim eid holiday when Aramco is closed, coincided with the flyball tournament hosted by my old club Dogz Rule!, about whom I have written many posts. The lovely Bell County Expo Center in Belton, Texas, located about 60 miles north of Austin, is a perfect venue for running flyball.
This is a good point to clearly state for the record that I flew halfway around the world just to go to a flyball tournament (literally halfway around the world, because I traveled about 12,900 km and the diameter of the earth is 12,750 km!).
When I told DR! that I could come help with the tournament, I expected the club to ask me to help with scoring. That's not a high profile job but a properly run score table is critical to running a flyball tournament; a typical tournament has multiple divisions containing four or five teams each, up to six dogs on each team, and multiple judges, all of which is organized and managed from the score table. I would have been happy to sit at the score table and in between recording scores and printing race results, watch the racing all weekend.
But to my complete amazement, when I showed up I was listed as coach or pass caller for all three DR! teams! I immediately demurred on pass calling. That's a skill that takes regular practice to do well and I've not practiced it for two years. So I ended up as coach. For three teams!
I have to confess that I harbored a secret hope that DR! would ask me to coach their C team. I coached that team for most of the time I was with DR! The C team is a team for green dogs who are testing their tournament readiness, older dogs who may be slowing down a bit, dogs who may not be able to run an entire weekend. Unlike the A or B teams which have relatively fixed line ups, the C team always went in with a second goal (besides winning, of course): to give all six dogs as much mat time as possible (only four run in any given race so there is lots of lineup juggling). The dogs assigned to the C team changed from tournament to tournament making it quite a challenge to coach! But I'm proud to brag that we usually finished first or second in our division. Sure, sure, the dogs and handlers were doing all the work, but I like to think I had a little tiny bit to do with it! The C team may not have set world time records but getting good passes and clean runs were often far more exciting for all involved.
So I was utterly thrilled that I not only had an opportunity to coach them again, but I was also going to be working with the A and B teams as well. I couldn't believe that DR! had that much faith in me.
But wait, there's more! DR! whipped out some club Tshirts--can't do flyball unless one is properly attired in club colors and logo. One of them was even an old shirt that I donated to the club when I left!
Finally, in an act of incredible generosity, Duwain offered to let me run his beautiful red BC Eris (as in goddess of discord). Eris was on the amazing team (the "well oiled machine") that took Harry all the way to his ONYX title at his last flyball tournament in August of 2009. She is lean, barky, and utterly obsessed by flyball, so consumed by the game that she will run for anybody, a charming behavior flaw. I didn't get to run Eris in just one or two races, I ran her all weekend long. I didn't do much coaching for the C team after all!
I know for sure that I would probably have ended up in a corner at least once that weekend with tears in my eyes because I was missing my fabulous boy Harry, who lived for flyball. But because I was able to regularly put my hands on a dog, a bucking, leaping, excited, barking dog and work the passes and run up and down the lane with my team, the weekend felt exactly like it was supposed to.
I've written before about the strange sport of flyball, how it draws groups of disparate people together with a common love of dogs and a bit of a competitive streak (and in the case of DR!, a propensity for foul language and starting on the wine a couple of hours after lunch, excepting the Ruetz family, who have stuck with DR! through thick and thin even though they don't engage in ANY of these questionable behaviors), and how the social aspect of the sport has as much appeal for the humans as the tennis ball part of it does for the dogs. That really struck me again as DR! members, both new and old, welcomed me back, well, like I was part of the family. And several other people from other clubs came up to me that weekend and said, hey, I noticed you've been gone. When I explained that I had been gone, that I was just in for a visit, to my surprise they all said, well, it's really good to see you here. Many dog sport communities are like this, and NAFA Region 5 flyball clubs are no exception.
After it was all over, Kim casually mentioned that it was as if I hadn't ever left. It meant a lot to me that she felt that way. It meant a lot that Duwain trusted me with his beautiful but crazy dog. It meant a lot that the club had enough patience to let me stalk up and down the lane yelling at everybody all weekend.
Dog friends have been my truest friends over the years, and DR! folks are some of the best friends anyone could hope to find.
It was a real stroke of luck that my November leave, timed to take place during the Muslim eid holiday when Aramco is closed, coincided with the flyball tournament hosted by my old club Dogz Rule!, about whom I have written many posts. The lovely Bell County Expo Center in Belton, Texas, located about 60 miles north of Austin, is a perfect venue for running flyball.
This is a good point to clearly state for the record that I flew halfway around the world just to go to a flyball tournament (literally halfway around the world, because I traveled about 12,900 km and the diameter of the earth is 12,750 km!).
When I told DR! that I could come help with the tournament, I expected the club to ask me to help with scoring. That's not a high profile job but a properly run score table is critical to running a flyball tournament; a typical tournament has multiple divisions containing four or five teams each, up to six dogs on each team, and multiple judges, all of which is organized and managed from the score table. I would have been happy to sit at the score table and in between recording scores and printing race results, watch the racing all weekend.
But to my complete amazement, when I showed up I was listed as coach or pass caller for all three DR! teams! I immediately demurred on pass calling. That's a skill that takes regular practice to do well and I've not practiced it for two years. So I ended up as coach. For three teams!
I have to confess that I harbored a secret hope that DR! would ask me to coach their C team. I coached that team for most of the time I was with DR! The C team is a team for green dogs who are testing their tournament readiness, older dogs who may be slowing down a bit, dogs who may not be able to run an entire weekend. Unlike the A or B teams which have relatively fixed line ups, the C team always went in with a second goal (besides winning, of course): to give all six dogs as much mat time as possible (only four run in any given race so there is lots of lineup juggling). The dogs assigned to the C team changed from tournament to tournament making it quite a challenge to coach! But I'm proud to brag that we usually finished first or second in our division. Sure, sure, the dogs and handlers were doing all the work, but I like to think I had a little tiny bit to do with it! The C team may not have set world time records but getting good passes and clean runs were often far more exciting for all involved.
So I was utterly thrilled that I not only had an opportunity to coach them again, but I was also going to be working with the A and B teams as well. I couldn't believe that DR! had that much faith in me.
But wait, there's more! DR! whipped out some club Tshirts--can't do flyball unless one is properly attired in club colors and logo. One of them was even an old shirt that I donated to the club when I left!
Finally, in an act of incredible generosity, Duwain offered to let me run his beautiful red BC Eris (as in goddess of discord). Eris was on the amazing team (the "well oiled machine") that took Harry all the way to his ONYX title at his last flyball tournament in August of 2009. She is lean, barky, and utterly obsessed by flyball, so consumed by the game that she will run for anybody, a charming behavior flaw. I didn't get to run Eris in just one or two races, I ran her all weekend long. I didn't do much coaching for the C team after all!
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| Rrrreeeeaaaaaadddyyyyy! Loud, barky dogs like Eris (and Harry in his day) are often useful in getting other dogs revved up. We are just inches away from the start dog. |
I know for sure that I would probably have ended up in a corner at least once that weekend with tears in my eyes because I was missing my fabulous boy Harry, who lived for flyball. But because I was able to regularly put my hands on a dog, a bucking, leaping, excited, barking dog and work the passes and run up and down the lane with my team, the weekend felt exactly like it was supposed to.
I've written before about the strange sport of flyball, how it draws groups of disparate people together with a common love of dogs and a bit of a competitive streak (and in the case of DR!, a propensity for foul language and starting on the wine a couple of hours after lunch, excepting the Ruetz family, who have stuck with DR! through thick and thin even though they don't engage in ANY of these questionable behaviors), and how the social aspect of the sport has as much appeal for the humans as the tennis ball part of it does for the dogs. That really struck me again as DR! members, both new and old, welcomed me back, well, like I was part of the family. And several other people from other clubs came up to me that weekend and said, hey, I noticed you've been gone. When I explained that I had been gone, that I was just in for a visit, to my surprise they all said, well, it's really good to see you here. Many dog sport communities are like this, and NAFA Region 5 flyball clubs are no exception.
After it was all over, Kim casually mentioned that it was as if I hadn't ever left. It meant a lot to me that she felt that way. It meant a lot that Duwain trusted me with his beautiful but crazy dog. It meant a lot that the club had enough patience to let me stalk up and down the lane yelling at everybody all weekend.
 |
| Get it! (No, I have no fingers on my right hand, apparently.) |
Dog friends have been my truest friends over the years, and DR! folks are some of the best friends anyone could hope to find.
1 comment:
You know little ol' Harry was there in your heart running flat out like he always did.
Loved the photos.
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