Flyball Fun

Friends don't let friends play flyball without alchohol. Yes, they staged this when I took a nap, but it isn't like I wasn't drinking anyway...(taken in May, 2009)

Dogz Rule! put in a great showing at Reliant again this year.

What is Reliant? It is probably one of the biggest, if not the biggest, dog shows on earth. It has conformation, obedience regular and rally, freestyle, agility (four rings), flyball (two rings), aisles and aisles of vendors, and more dogs and dog people than you can shake a stick at. It takes place in the Reliant Center in south Houston. Houston in August is hot and steamy, the concrete floors are hard on your feet and knees, it's loud and frenetic. It is not a show to be missed if possible.

We had one team on Friday that was put together to allow two green dogs a chance to strut their stuff. Boy, they sure did a great job! We took first place in our division and one of the dogs earned her first two titles. Harry was a backup dog on that team and ran a couple of races with great enthusiasm.

We had three teams running on Saturday and Sunday. As one of my club members said in her wrap-up post, it takes a village to run a Reliant team. We have a white board listing the assigned jobs for every team: box loader, box bitch, shagger (self-shagging is just such a pain), line video, stats taker, pass caller, pass scribe, coach, and of course handlers and dogs! I was coach for our C team, running Harry in start slot for our B team, and handling a big barky BC named Marz in start slot for our A team. I was running around and yelling at someone or some dog all weekend long.

I rotated all six of the C team dogs in and out of the lineup so that they each ran almost the same number of races. I was also able to be somewhat strategic about my choice of dogs to use in each race, and that team, which was seeded fourth in their division, came out strong and led the pack to a first place finish on Sunday. This makes it sound like my line up strategy had something to do with that win. Really, though, we won because all six of those handlers and dogs were consistent and solid. We beat teams that may have been faster than us because we were running clean and they were not.

I got a perfect start of 0.000 seconds with Marz on the A team, my second perfect start with him. The hosting club gives out Tshirts for perfect starts. But the rest of the time, I had a case of nerves, I think, and wasn't able to maintain starts with Marz much better than 0.1 seconds, but at least I was able to keep him in that zone. This team finished a frustrating fourth place because we had to make some dog substitutions on Saturday with some slower dogs and because the core dogs had too many errors scattered amongst them. Marz in particular was having trouble at the box, dropping his ball. We decided he was getting too wound up at the start (causing him to reach the box at such a speed that he was not getting good turns or good grips on the ball) so I had to back way off and release him with a minimum of fuss and fanfare. This also contributed to my not getting better starts with him--I was afraid that my tension and excitement about pushing a very tight start would cause him to get too excited again.


But all of you really want to hear about Harry, right?

On Friday, he ran a couple of 4.8 second runs, to my complete astonishment. Over the weekend, he consistently ran 5.0 seconds, sometimes for five heats in a row. Sure, a 5.1 or a 4.9 run would slip in there now and then, and when he ran a 5.2 second heat, I gave him some K9 Restart which perked him right back up. But for him to race five heats every race, sometimes more if there were false starts, and do it for two solid days, and to maintain such a consistent peformance--wow. I am so proud of my little old man--Harry will be 11 in about 3 weeks! I will surely be corrected by a teammate, but I think he had one flagged error all weekend when he dropped the ball before crossing the line.

Harry at rest, July 2009.

Harry's team totally stomped the competition and took first place in their division. It was a fabulous line up of little dogs--Harry the smooth fox terrier, Tofu the tiny BC/pap/?? mix, Rudy the little staffy bitch, and Sisko the small BC mix. The total weight of the four dogs could not have exceeded 100 lbs. Great handling, great passes, dogs running clean and fast. A perfect combination, and it showed in our racing.

Harry picked up 835 points for the three days. He now has 19,409 points and is within two tournaments of getting his ONYX title (20,000 points), a very big deal in the world of NAFA. Dogz Rule! has four other ONYX dogs, three of whom are still racing.

There is another tournament in August and Dogz Rule! is hosting their annual tournament in November--so it could be possible for Harry to earn this title this year. It would mean a lot for me to do this with Dogz Rule!

I'm not sure I can achieve this goal for him, though. With no job in sight, it is hard for me to justify the cost of going to a tournament, even when I shave those costs down to the bone. For Reliant, a friend paid for my hotel, another friend bought me dinner on Saturday night, and the club gathered donations to pay Harry's tournament fees (I had to go into the parking lot for a little cry when I found this out). I can't ask them to subsidize me indefinitely.