Good Times! January 30-31 Tournament

After a long fun weekend, DR! is home and resting their flyball muscles (you know . . . the muscles you only know you have because they ache after a tournament?). It was a successful tournament in Huntsville and co-hosts Electric Dawg and Flat Out Flyers did a spectacular job. Good times were had all around.

Both 4 Dogz with Ballz and Dogz in Da Hood took 2nd place in their respective divisions.

Highlights include:

• 4 Dogz getting GOOSED by LSR. Not once but twice.
  
• Karl finishing his provisional judging hours and applying to become an APPROVED judge.

• Duwain's BC, Velvet, made up for the last Huntsville visit (where she decided playtime was not over and took a tour of the fairgrounds). She ran several full runs in warm-ups. Lookin' good Velvet, lookin' good.
• Kim boxloaded for the first time in 11 years of flyball! Though difficult to resist, she made sure not to pet the dogs as they ran by and there were no flags on our boxloader!
• Trixi ran sub-6 line-to-line the majority of the tournament. She even has a new PB of 5.5. Perhaps Kim will be boxloading more often???

• Ben ran Ryp on 4 Dogz for multiple races. After a couple of near collisions with Jenn & Hawkeye (running anchor tends to make you forget there are dogs behind you), he found his spot, got some good passes AND allowed Jenn to see for the pass.
  

You may ask why I wasn't running Ryp for these races? It is because REMIX made her debut and earned her FD & FDX! Aside from a couple of no-balls due to excitement, she did great for her first time in the lanes AND first time over her height of 9".

• Sandra - Flyball Photographer Extraordinaire - launches RuetzDogz. With a brand new camera (Sandra only got it the day before), a crazy huge zoom lens, low light settings and fast action, she was able to get the hang of it in no time and snap some great action shots! Unfortunately for her, this means we will be bugging her for photos of our dogz in action!!!

Overall it was a great tourney. The Hoodz dogz and 4 Dogz ran well and were solid. We're looking forward to March with the Misfitz team.

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.