Readyyyyyyy

Our next trek took us to Hastings, Michigan for our first U-Fli event. We mostly just wanted to check it out and have a little fun. We ran singles on Friday night and with a pick up team on Saturday. The other team members were mostly from Overdogs, but we did race once with a Rude Dog named Melee. Everyone there was very nice, totally welcoming, and it was a great time. Bleys was the height dog and measured at 6" (which is the lowest height available and quite a bit lower than he runs in NAFA). Bleys earned his Top Flight title and got a sweet squeaky toy out of the deal. The racing situation was a little different than Florida with the crating outside. But it did make the racing arena a little quieter...not a lot, mind you, but a little. Most teams camped out in RVs right at the site and used those as their crating area. We set up in an open pole barn across from the racing building. It was just fine, but I would imagine it might get a little hot sometimes. My Mom even stopped by for a while to check it out. It was really nice to have her see it!

Roland and Scotty

It's been a while huh? I've been to Michigan and back and been keeping myself busy since getting back last week. Roland has been super busy presenting at conferences and writing his article. He has finished a draft of the article, which is awesome and is hoping to be able to send it out for the fall submissions to journals.

So lets go back in time to when we left for Michigan. There was a flyball tournament in Orlando so we decided just to use that as a first leg and take off from there.

Roland got to run Scotty at this tournament and did a fantastic job. Scotty is not the easiest dog to run because he's pretty crazy, but I think that made Roland a good match, becuase he is perpetually calm. It was kind of funny to watch Roland standing there all completely calm holding Scotty who was yanking against his harness and generally doing his best to impersonate a rabid dog. Bleys shared a spot with another dog and did very well. He earned his FDX (500 points) and it was generally a good time. One of the other dogs earned her FM (5000 points) and I made her a crate tag to celebrate it. I thought it turned out really well.

Tee Hee

Congratulations to Bleys now officially the top ranked and fastest all time Cavalier in U-Fli....oh wait, he's the only Cavalier in U-Fli.

Puppy Flies with Friends

Yesterday went really well. Our team didn't do very well in the tournament, but because it was a pick-up team anyhow it didn't really matter. I think given a little practice we could have done much better. As it was Bleys ended up running anchor because he was a little spooked by the other dog running at him. We ran with an Irish Setter named Story, a small Border Collie name Whispie, and a Australian Cattle Dog named Nora.

Bleys did earn enough points to get his Top Flight title, but he was more interested in the squeeky toy he got for running on a team. The people were very nice again and very laid back about things. This was good because there wasn't much stress about things, but since everyone (including the judges) were pretty laid back it meant that racing went at least an hour longer than it would have if it had been more controlled. The judges we have in Florida keep things rolling right along and even shorten the warmups to 1 minutes after everyone has had a chance to get at least one 2 minutes warmup. I think people in Florida tend to complain a bit about the strict judging, but I really appreciate it! The lights we had even had a timer in them. The judge could just push a button twice and there were two minutes counting down for everyone to clearly see. I liked that, but I would miss being able to see how fast the dog doing the warm up was. A trade off I suppose. Anyway, it was a lot of fun and I'm glad that I got a chance to do it.

Puppy Flies

We're all in Hastings this evening. We drove up today and participated in our first U-Fli singles event. It was interesting. There weren't very many entrys, I think between the singles and the pairs there were only 10 or so. Everyone there was extremely nice and helpful. A fellow just came up and ball shagged for me without any prompting. The event is being held at the Barry Expo Center which turns out to be a fair ground type place. There are 6 buildings that aren't really enclosed fully - sort of barn-ish and a lot of RV parking/camping. There is also a race track for those horse cart thingys. It looks like most all of the teams camp out right there, which makes sense because there aren't many motels nearby.

I still haven't met any of the people from the pick-up team since none of them signed up for singles or pairs. I hope that things go well and Bleys catches some balls tomorrow!

Spring Fling

We attended another Flyball tournament this past weekend so I've been out of town since Friday. It was a really nice time although the facility just wasn't designed to hold that many people. The air conditioning really struggled to keep up, especially on Saturday when it was very sunny. The building is pretty much a metal box so it acts like an oven. Bleys didn't start racing until almost half-way through the day so he also struggled. He was pretty slow and we ended up spending quite some time out in the car's air conditioning at the end of the day. Sunday was better because at least part of the day was overcast, and Bleys started racing right off the bat. Bleys did very well for himself and I think everyone had a good time. Roland even ran Bleys for a couple of races! Although I'm not really sure how that went because I had to hide. If Bleys saw me, I'm pretty sure he would forget about the racing and try to come over and say hello instead! That's what happens at practice anyway.

Roland and I took quite a few pictures and for the most part they didn't turn out too badly. I'm still unhappy with the noise, but I'll have to experiment some more to see if changing some settings will allow a better result. A few of pictures are over at Flickr (click on the above picture), but most of them are at the Storm Riders website.

Now Bleys is at a new puppy boarding place and Roland and I are preparing to go up to Disney to see his parents, sister, niece, and brother-in-law. We will be back on Friday and then I'm going to just say no to traveling for a few weeks before we start our trek up to Michigan in mid-June.

Proofs

If you are interested, the professional pictures from the tournament are now available. There are a lot of them to sift through though. If you click here you can choose Saturday or Sunday and then click on any folder with SR somewhere in the title (for instance the second folder on Saturday "02 BOI-SR"). If you aren't so keen on that you can check out this folder of the pictures that Roland and I chose to get. There were some additional pictures that I liked, but it seemed like 5 was plenty to purchase...probably more than enough.

Other fun pictures include this one when I got to run Ace a couple of times, and this one of a pretty nice pass between Hannah and Cagny. I also like this one of Scotty and his "but I want both" conundrum. Ooh, or this one, this one, and this one of Deuce, Ace, and Jake showing just how far ahead of the jump they leave the ground.

Back to the Future

Pensacola is in a different time zone. Did you know that? I didn't, until the flyball team decided to go to a tournament there. It was quite a drive so some of the team didn't really want to go that far. That was an advantage for me because that meant Bleys might get some more time to run. And he did. The team was way too nice and rearranged the teams on Sunday so that Bleys could run a bunch on a team that could make up for his slower times. He earned his FD (Flyball Dog) and FDX (Flyball Dog Excellent) titles thanks to their generosity. Bleys did pick up his speed a tiny bit once he was more comfortable with things, but he is still a good 3 seconds too slow to really be a good contributor to a team. If he gets the whole catching the ball from the box thing down (which we are making progress on) I think that will help, but I just don't know how fast he will ever be.

As an added bonus there was a professional photographer there. He took really nice pictures of all the dogs and got some nice ones of Bleys. I ordered some, but they won't be ready for three weeks or so. He does have a website where the pictures (untouched) will be available for viewing and I'm sure for purchase, but they aren't up there yet. He said probably by tomorrow or Thursday. When they are up I'll post a link so you can check them out if you want to!

The other new dog who ran did amazing! Jake is a tricolored rat terrier who has been learning flyball for about a year and a half, he started about 6 months before Bleys did. He had some set backs early on with a little fear of popping the box, but it looks like he's really got it and boy is he a fast little guy. He's going to rival Kodi (one of the other height dogs on the team) for speed and cute factor. He did passing like a pro and was super fast!

All this really got me to thinking on the way home. It's not really fair to ask the team to do all that special arranging for Bleys on a regular basis, especially since there is another dog who is slow like Bleys, but who has been on the team longer. If they are going to build a team around a slower dog it should be her, and I don't know that they want to in the first place. It is a competitive sport after all. I've already committed to going to the tournament at the end of May, so I think I will still go, but maybe I'll just help out with boxloading, stats, and pictures.

Sproing

Sproing
Originally uploaded by Sirelroka

Roland took some really nice pictures at practice today. He also ran Bleys for the first half of practice. We should have left it that way since when I took over Bleys didn't do very well. I worry that we might be starting to see some of the exercise intolerance that accompanies a worsening of his heart murmur. We will just have to wait and see, but I'm trying to prepare myself for the fact that we might not be attending too many more tournaments. We can still play on Sundays, but if he stops enjoying it... There are some more pictures over in my Flickr stream if you're interested.

Practice

Shutter Lag
Originally uploaded by Sirelroka

Today we had flyball practice and we took my new camera. I didn't have much time to take pictures but Roland managed to get in a few. Including this one that shows the camera has a little shutter lag. We also found out that Julie and John are engaged! Julie is one of the ladies on the team and John started coming to practice when they started dating. Congratulations John and Julie.

One of our long distance team members drove down for a Disc Dog competition yesterday and practice today, so after practice we all drove our dogs home and then met up for lunch. I took some pictures there, but they weren't very good (you can still check them out at flickr). I still have a lot to learn about my camera and taking good indoor shots appears to be one of them. I think I'm going to have to spend some time with the instruction manual and have a chat with my Dad about how to handle it.

Flurry

Hannah and Kodi
Originally uploaded by Sirelroka

This weekend was a busy one! The flyball team I take classes from had a demo scheduled for Saturday. The SPCA Wildlife Center has a Walk for Wildlife every year to raise money and has a pet fair afterwards in the park. There were many booths of local rescues, pet stores, food vendors, and even Lowe's who brought out a cool project for the kids to build and take home with them. They had a lure course set up and a dog fun area. We also set up a little area and did a demonstration and had a few dogs come in and try it out.

It was a bit of a challenge getting the area fenced in (to prevent dogs from walking through and watering the equipment and because our dogs are off leash when they are running. We got it figured out though and the actual demo went okay. We only had four dogs, so we were just running doubles, but that was fine. Bleys was actually one of those dogs and he did a really great job. He still doesn't really do the catching thing, but he brought the ball back and really seemed to be running fast (for him). He even practiced some passing and didn't do too badly. Roland was super-awesome and ran to the store and then boxloaded for one of the teams. I don't know how I lucked out with such a great guy.

One of the big draws of this event is that Jeff Corwin comes and starts off the walk and this year he did a nice question and answer session with the kids. I thought that was pretty sweet and the kids really seemed to like it. All in all a nice day at the park.

Demo

This one was taken a while ago, but I seem to have forgotten to upload it. It was taken by one of the other people on the flyball team at the warm-up for the demo at Happy Tails Park. Bleys didn't actually get to run in the demo because I was doing the talking, but he did get to warm up before hand. Look at those ear flap! This was the day that he tripped over his ear hair a bit and I decided to trim them. I miss those long ears though.

Craftyland

It's been quite a while since I did anything with this here blog. I somehow got myself into a bunch of projects that all came due at the same time. It's mostly because of a demonstration that the flyball team I take classes from was doing. The park that allows them to practice there every week was having a doggy festival thingy and asked the Storm Riders to put on a little demo, showing people what flyball is about.

Apparently no one wanted to do the talking so I said I would. Somehow that turned into me organizing a lot of it. So I went all teacher on it and planned it to within an inch of it's life. The demo was right in the middle of the day, and we had a booth all day long at the festival. For those people who weren't there during that actual demo I made up a little display board that explains a little about flyball and has some pictures of the Storm Riders. Then I made up a facebook with all the team dogs getting a page with their info and some pictures, including one of them with their person. I thought it turned out really well! I wasn't sure how scrapbook people do lettering so I embroidered it on a length of ribbon with metallic thread. I originally wanted blue ribbon, but I couldn't find anywhere that had enough of it. So I settled for black instead. Hopefully it doesn't look too weird. I also made up some brochures and some business sized cards for people to take from the table.

I really struggled to get everything done by the day of the demo (which was yesterday), but it all went fine. A lot of that is thanks to Roland who was hugely supportive and helped me a million. The actual demo part was a little difficult because the microphone was corded and I could really see the flyball team from where I was standing. This made it hard to tell which team won the races we were running. Roland sort of stood at the edge where he could see the demo and I could see him and he used hand signals to let me know what was going on. Not the smoothest operation, but such is life. Anyhow, the demo is over now and I'm exhausted. I think I got way too much sun and didn't drink enough water or something.

On the way to flyball

Bleys and Jubilee on the way to flyball practice this morning. Jubilee did awesome, as expected. She didn't care who she ran for, Derek, me, whoever. As long as there was a ball involved she was fine. Bleys did all right as well. He still gets a little spooked when a dog is coming off the lane and he is supposed to go on it. And he still doesn't grok that it would be great if he actually caught the ball from the box, but it's going well anyway. I think they both had a good time.

Roland was nice enough to join me this morning to help wrangle both dogs and crates and whatnot. It was nice to have him there, but it is very early, so I'm not sure how often it will happen. Oh, and there are a couple other pictures of these two on the way to practice in my Flickr account if you are interested.

Human Flyball

One of the ladies from flyball had this linked on her youtube page. This is what happens when the tables are turned. Warning the videography is questionable at best, and a bit on the loud side.

Storm Riders Embroidered Apron

So, for a while I've been eyeballing an add-on to my embroidery software that would allow me to take my own images and digitize them into embroidery designs. It's a little on the expensive side, so I've been putting it off. However, last week, I finally broke down and bought it. It.Is.So.Cool. My first effort was the flyball team logo (you check out the original here). Which turned out pretty well, if I do say so myself. I'm still figuring out the program and what it can do, but I think it looks pretty professional.

The reason I chose the logo to do first is that each flyball team needs have someone to load the tennis balls in the flyball box during races. The woman who does this for the Storm Riders team, Lane, is a really nice lady. She is in the process of training Jake, her rat terrier. Jake and Bleys are pretty close to the same level I think, but Jake has the potential to be much faster. Anyway, Lane does this awesome job for the team, without much thanks most of the time. I thought it would be nice to give her an apron (most people who do this job wear one to hold the extra tennis balls within reach, but out of site) with the logo on it. I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out. Although I sort of made up all the dimensions, so I'm going to tell her that I will make another one wider/longer/whatever-er if she wants.

I couldn't hear you

As Roland mentioned he was nice enough to accompany me to a flyball tournament this past weekend. I'm not sure how much he really liked it, but it was really nice to share it with him. It was, as usual, extremely loud. I still don't understand how the other team members spend all day in there without some sort of ear protection. I use my ear bud earphones. I don't normally have them plugged into anything, I just use them for the noise reduction. I warned Roland ahead of time so he also had some ear plugs with him.

Bleys did get to warm up a few times and he did okay. I think he would have gotten it by the end of the weekend if we had gotten in just a couple more runs. But it just didn't work out, I guess. Unfortunately the tournament in October got canceled, I won't be able to go to the one in November, and there isn't one in December (holidays and all). So it will be quite a while until Bleys gets to try again. I'm trying not to be bummed about this, but it isn't working at all.

Flyball

As I mentioned before I went to a flyball tournament a few weekends ago. I also recently wrote a website for the flyball team I take classes from. The website can be found here, and the pictures that were descent (and some from another photographer) can be found the gallery of 2007 events. There are also a couple of videos of a flyball race if you are interested, one can be found in the practice gallery, and one can be found in the 2007 events gallery (it's the very last thing on the page).

Moon

What a lovely weekend. Saturday was our anniversary and we decided to stay in. We rented some movies and ate another Cheese Fest type dinner. We bought many cheeses, some deli meats, and some bread. I also tried to make some chocolate lava cakes from a mix, but that went all kinds of wrong. It was very nice to spend some quiet time with my husband. Saturday was also Roland's mom's birthday so, Happy Birthday!

Today I went to flyball again and it went very well. Last week was a bit of a disaster, but this week Bleys did really well. He is still a little unsure if he has to go the whole 51 feet away from me to get the ball so we stick to the side that is all fenced in which means he pretty much can't to it wrong. The idea is that eventually he will be used to running that whole way away from me, gets the ball, and runs back with it. Hopefully someday! Every week I slather on the sunscreen, wear a hat, and sunglasses, and every week I still feel like my face gets burned. My arms and legs are fine, but my face feels warm and tight like it got burned, though it's not at all pink.

I wish

_W8F9966_wm.jpg
Originally uploaded by Sam Bennett

Hopefully there will be an actual blog post coming along soon, what with all the diving and eating and whatnot, but until then check out this dude's flyball pictures. I especially like this one and the one of the Brittney Spaniel. I only wish I could take pictures like this!

Flyball hopeful

I was lucky enough to have someone take some pictures of Bleys at Flyball on Monday. Her name is Claudia and she has an adorable little pup named Kodi. You can check out some of her other pictures from practice on Sunday. Here Bleys looks all impressive going for the ball on the flyball box. Unfortunately half the time once he gets up there he forgets what I want him to do with the ball. Despite this, we are making all sort of progress in learning this sport. When we started Bleys didn't have a clue how to retrieve and he didn't know how to catch anything in his mouth. I mean if you threw a piece of food at him he would let it hit him in the face, wait for it to fall to the floor, and then eat it. Now he retrieves reliably in the house and about 75% outside with distractions. He also catches food about 95% of the time and will actually catch a ball (when thrown gently) about 50% of the time. I thinks that is doing really well for a little less than 2 months.

Wind

We had flyball again this morning and it went pretty well. I just really wish I had some jumps at home to work with. Even better I would love to have a flyball box too, but the jumps at least could be made for not a ridiculous amount of money. If we were still in Michigan I could just impose on my Dad to cut them out for me and then I could finish them myself. But now that I'm in Florida I don't have that option.

Anway, I took some more pictures at practice (of the real flyball dogs). So here they are:




This one isn't terribly good, with the blurry factor, but the dog seemed to having so much fun leaping!


Same with this one, taken on the second run.


Between races this dog looked so nice, just standing there, it deserved a picture.


This was my favorite picture of the day.

Super

Well it seems that my computer is going to give me grief. Last night it decided that both hard drives had errors and and since it was both of them nothing was bootable. So I called my Dad and we tried to figure out what was going on. Eventually I did get to Windows and was able to re-back up everthing to my extrnal hard drive (I had done that a week or so ago, but since a crash seems evident I thought it would be nice to do it again). This morning I called Dell and got India, then my cell phone signal faded. So as it stands my computer is working (albeit on the slow side) but my raid array is still trying to rebuild itself and I'm not convinced that it will be successful, Sprint is the bane of my existance, and the Dell people can't help me unless my computer is actively malfunctioning right this minute.

In happier news Bleys did really well (for him) at Flyball yesterday. We've been working hard on it in the living room and it's been getting much better, but I was nervous about taking him outside with a bunch of other dogs (so many distractions). But he did, for the first time outside, run up to the box, and get the tennis ball. He didn't actually bring it back to me so much, but he did grab it! Yay for Bleys.

Also in the better news department, Roland and I tried out a new restaurant with some people he knows from school. The place is called Galanga and is a mixture of Thai and Japanese. I actually liked the appetizer better than the dinner I chose, but those who ordered sushi said it was awesome. So, perhaps if Jason comes to visit sometime we can swing over there and he can try out the sushi.

Aeroga

I took some pictures at flyball practice this week. Some were okay, but a few were actually pretty good. What do you think?









Maybe someday there will be a picture of Bleys doing this?

Petapalooza

Yesterday Bleys and I trekked over Petapalooza. It was a good time and there was a lot of dog related fun to be had. There was an off-lead dog play area, booths for rescue organizations, people who make and sell dog food and treats, and doggie day care/boarding centers, a Frisbee Dog demonstration, and a flyball tournament. Since we just tried out flyball for the first time last Sunday we wandered over to watch for a while. For anyone who doesn't know what a flyball course looks like, here's one.

In case people were interesed in what a flyball run looks like I took a video (although keep in mind the course is longer than my camera is wide - each side has 4 hurdles...and my video isn't very good).



A lot of the dogs that run flyball are Border Collies. They are very, I repeat, very fast, extremely smart and incredibly focused. All the traits that made them fantastic herding dogs make them superlative flyball dogs (and are all reasons I wouldn't own one). The hurdles' height are set by the shortest dog on the team though, so many teams have one small dog on them to lower the bar for the rest of the team. Yesterday there were all sorts of breeds out running.

Border Collie and Miniature Australian Shepherd


Schnauzer and Westie


Sheltie and Rottie


Weimaraner and AMBOR


Some other cool shots I took include this one of a dog turning at the box.


And one of two dogs jumping hurdles at the same time.


And one of a cute little ruby Cavalier who was also visiting the park.