What a wonderful weekend!

Friday, I arrived early at the tournament site to set up crates and get the dogs walked before Friday Night Racing started at 5:00. There ended up being a handler and dog stuck in traffic who couldn't make their spot, so Pallo ran as well as Koira.

Koira ran awesome. I was very, very proud of her. We ran in singles, which meant I had to try to start my dogs. The best start I got was a -.006 (we weren't rerunning false starts in singles). The worst I got was 1. something seconds. Safe to say I probably shouldn't be running the start dog at any tournaments in the near future. Koira and Pallo both ran awesome, and each had a best time (line to line time) of 4.9 and change.

Saturday went pretty good. Pallo was running with our Omegas team, and had four races for the day. Unfortunately, I am still trying to get him to potty regularly outside while at tournaments, and he had to repeat the last year's debacle of pooping in the ring. It seems like no matter how long I walk this dog outside before a race, it just doesn't matter. Other than that, though, he ran really well. He did drop his ball early a handful of times, but mostly just in the race where he ended up soiling in the ring. Can't hold in it from both ends at the same time, I guess.

Koira and Pallo both were running on Sunday. Pallo had four races again, and Koira was scheduled for two races. Pallo had a bit more of a problem with dropping on Sunday, but thankfully did much better with the pottying outside. I made a bad mistake of losing track of time while outside walking him and ended up late for our first race back after lunch. We got there just in time for racing, but made the team panic a good bit before we got there. So, not a great weekend in terms of mistakes, with one big one each day. But, we had fun, and I think everyone on our team had a good time as well.

Koira was a little rock star. Her division was running 4 of 4s (means 4 heats per race, for those non-flyball people out there). She did a good warm up run back and full run, then in the first heat fumbled the ball at the box. But, she did a great rerun. And, the other three races were awesome. Our whole team was doing amazing, and we pulled in three under-24 second times in a row. Koira's second race (halfway through the day) went really good as well, but the dogs were all getting tired with the second half of the second day of racing, so our times weren't quite as stellar. Then, in the last race of the day, one of our dogs got very tired, and Koira went in for the last two heats to help out. She ran great in the first one, especially with having no warm up and running in the other lane from her earlier two races. Her second run wasn't so great, however, with a fumble on the box leading to playing slip-and-slide off the matting on the concrete floor not only once, but on her rerun as well.

Overall, the weekend was great. We had an amazing food spread brought by our whole team, we achieved a lot with all of our inexperienced dogs running awesome, and our experienced dogs getting right on down to business. We had a couple of really close races each day, which always gets the heart pounding as you watch the two anchor dogs racing for the finish line. Our newest team members did an awesome job with their first tournament, helping out with running dogs, calling passes, ball hopping, taking stats, and jumping in anywhere they felt they could help.

And, you may have noticed. Koira has letters behind her name! I have to wait for the host club to finish scoring and send everything in to NAFA for it to be official, but I believe Koira earned not only her Flyball Dog (FD) title, but I think she got her Flyball Dog Excellent (FDX) as well. Whatever points my dogs came home with, I am very proud of both of them for an awesome weekend!

I will post videos later, after I get a chance to recover some and go through them. And, hopefully, a few more pictures as well once I get in contact with the people who had cameras at the event.