A Great Weekend of Flyball Indeed!

Dogz Rule! had a great weekend of flyball in Huntsville. We're all home and boy, are we pooped!

4Dogz held onto a strong second place in their division with some really tight runs, even sweeping one of Top Dog Racer's teams at the end of the day on Sunday in three clean heats. We had 10 exciting runs in the 17's!

After a scary first race where they broke out TWICE, Hoodz swept their division (they gave up a few heats but no races except for that first one all weekend) and took first place. No doubt about it, we stomped the competition into submission.

Rumz was in an Open division with a large spread in seed times. With two seconds between the first seeded team and their own seed, it would have been difficult to win on time, so our principal goal was to run clean (and thus win on consistency), give the six dogs as much mat time as possible, and have a good time. By forcing the other teams to fight for their wins and taking heats here and there in every race, we mixed up the placement order by the end of the weekend. It's great to be a spoiler!

Here are some weekend highlights:

• Harry got his ONYX title with 21 points to spare (more on the circusk9 blog).

• Ryp and Sisko got their FDCH-Gold titles.

• Lauren punched Kim in the mouth. I'll let one of them provide gory details.
  

• Marz ran a personal best of 3.88 seconds. I was honored to handle him all weekend.

• Bad dog Velvet ran away and half a dozen DR! people mobilized to look for her. She was found; it probably took longer to find all of the DR! people and get them back to the arena.

• Kim wants to be The Most Interesting Woman in the World.
  

• Duncan raced all weekend (he ran in 7 of Rumz' 8 races), had some great saves from box bobbles, looked very hard at a JRT in the other lane, and still decided to return to Jenn. We won't be able to call him a green dog for much longer!
  

• Ben box-loaded for Rumz all weekend. I think he now better understands one of the basic box-loader tenets: after the fourth dog comes through, always reload the box with a ball, any ball.

• Ivy is looking fantastic, completing several full runs in her warm up slot with Hoodz.

• Thirteen-year-old Wich ran two error-free races, both of which included four heats, with beautiful four-foot box turns. He was so excited to be racing with his buddies. Old Dogz Rule!
  

• Our prez Karl is being fast-tracked for NAFA judge certification and it seemed like he was in the ring all weekend in his black-and-white stripes. He judged quite a few DR! races and has to be commended for his professionalism and calmness. Of course, he was also tapped to judge Human Flyball on Sunday. Karl, does that count towards the certification?

• Hoodz was undefeated all weekend, except for the first race where we broke out twice, beating the other team on time although NAFA didn't quite see it that way.