We
had a great weekend of racing at Wags for Wishes. We placed 3rd in our
division each day. Friday we were in Division 3 and Saturday in
Division 2. It was quite competitive but we held our own. The seasoned
dogs ran fabulously (although not without some bobbles). The new dogs
(Dodger L., Lil Dude & Indy) all ran fantastic! They did us
proud. Dodger and Dude were amazing. Both of them, after going wide
on a box turn, corrected themselves and came back over the jumps.
That is a sign of a dog that knows its job!!!! Indy ran successfully
for the first time in 3 heats on Saturday. I am a very proud mom. It
has only been 2 ½ years since we started training.
In addition
to some fabulous racing we do have some brags. The dogs earned titles
this weekend are listed below. To get more information on title and
accumulating points, take a look at the NAFA website www.flyball.org
and read Chapter 8 – Awards.
Lil Dude & Dodger both earned
their FD Title (Flyball Dog) for earning at least 20 points and FDX
Title (Flyball Dog Excellent) for earning at least 100 pts. Indy earned her FD Title.
Casey earned her FDCh-G (Flyball Dog Champion Gold) for hitting the 2500 point mark.
And
of course, we couldn’t have done it without Mac (who has over 30,000
points) and Taiko (with over 13,000). Quigley did some recalls in the racing lane on Friday and of course looked like he belonged there! We also had a very exciting moment when Mac was just a smidge too fast and missed his triple zero start. WOW!!! though was it ever so close.
It was a great showing for our first tournament. We can't wait for more. ~ The Captains
The Blazin’ K9s flyball team did our first demo on July 17, 2008 at the Phoenix Mercury Basketball game. This was the Phoenix Mercury’s annual Dog Days of Summer Event so they had rescue organizations and other pet related activities going on throughout the day. What a rush!!!!!
We competed against Heatwave Flyball team from the Northwest Valley in a fun and exciting halftime competition. The dogs who raced were McGregor (handler, Erin Cross), Taiko (Carmen Oliveras), Casey (Carol Osterhaus) & Lil’ Dude (Kim Kowalski). Our box loader was Carole Tyrell and ball shagger was Marissa, junior handler in training. Rob did an outstanding job announcing and can’t wait until the next one!
We raced on mats (thanks to Heatwave) so if a dog went wide there was a little slipping around but the dogs did an excellent job of self-correcting. Our green dog, Lil’ Dude started barking when he got to the box during the first heat but he figured out what was going on and ran perfectly after that. He is an up and comer with Blazin’ K9s. Casey & Taiko had a really close pass (due to handler error) but like pros it didn’t even phase them. We ran out of time so we were only able to run 4 heats. We had a 2-2 tie with no clear winner. We are looking forward to (and planning) the day for a friendly rematch!!!
We had a fabulous time and the crowd loved it! It is such a fantastic way to make the public aware of the sport of Flyball and to help grow flyball in the “Valley of the Sun”!