Fame

I was staying pretty quiet about our amazing weekend plans before hand. But, now that they have happened, and happened well, I will share.


I painted Pallo's nails teal to match the colors of the team we were running with

Me and Pallo were invited to join the Tail Blazers for a half time show at the Portland Rose Garden during the Nike Hoop Summit game on Saturday night. The Portland Trail Blazers have had the Tail Blazers flyball team perform at their half time shows previously, so it is a rather routine thing for the rest of them. For me, it seemed like a pretty awesome chance to play flyball in possibly the most distracting environment ever, expose some more people to the awesomeness that is our sport, and have the crowd ooh and ahh over my adorable dog.



I spent the day in Portland hitting the sights (which for me means Fabric Depot and picking up a new pair of jeans at the mall when I realized I accidentally wore a pair that was way too big). Then we met up with the team and followed them over to the Rose Garden.



We had our own room to wait in until half time. They even gave the Tail Blazers one room and Muddy Paws (the other team running in the half time show) two different rooms. It seemed like a wait of forever and a day, so I spent the time taking pictures of the various team dogs.



We basically were trying to keep the dogs calm and quiet without making them too tired. Pallo was super jealous of Tater (below) for getting a ton of treats from his human pez dispenser.



We practiced various tricks, tugging, playing games, and even ran through some heeling and other obedience. And still we were waiting.



We finally got the call that we were near half time (luckily right after coming back in from pottying the dogs for the last time) and all headed out for the tunnel, where we then stood around and waited while there were multiple fouls that delayed the end of the half.

We finally paraded our dogs in through the tunnel, past all the food sitting on the floor under seats right next to us, and onto the floor of the arena. The cheerleaders were in charge of rolling out carpet runners across the court and setting out our jumps (premarked with white tape for distance on the carpet). The whole set up went super fast. Then, we were ready to race.



Awesomely, Tail Blazers' box loader had a camera to attach to the top of the box which allowed us to get the entire half time show on video. We were trying to make sure the two teams stayed competitive-looking with each other, so varied our passes to make it happen. Pallo runs third in the lineup each time. The start dog was varied between Tater (first two and last heats) and Nano, the black and white border jack.



Afterwards, we paraded back out (where Pallo decided the only thing scary in the entire building of loud, cheering people and people with huge cameras and all sorts of other stuff, was the group of middle school cheerleaders with their pom poms). We packed up our equipment and headed back to the room to water the dogs and collect our gear left there.



Pallo was super tired by the time we were done (we normally run no more than five heats at a time before we take a break), but he had a ton of fun. He is such a solid, amazing dog. In fact, you can see how awesome all of these dogs are with all these weird distractions. Tater, the little dach-poodle mix who starts the first two and last heats, is actually a "green" dog who has only been in competition once, and he ran rock solid even in front of this huge crowd.



Pallo did get shown up a bit by super-cute Tater and by the full corgi in the other lane, Elli (who runs last in the video, on the other side). I don't think he noticed though, he was just there to play FLYBALL!

After heading out for dinner afterwards, I took a nice two hour drive home and went to bed the second I got home. It was a total blast of Saturday.

We also spent today doing fun Easter stuff, but that is for another post, I think.