First In Flight Flyball Team

Thanks to everyone for another great weekend of flyball. I hope everyone has made it safely home, and that everyone has tired dogs! Because I sure am tired. FOUR teams is a lot of work!

I went up Saturday expecting to miserably cold, but found myself pleasantly surprised to be comfortable all weekend, regardless of the temps, thanks to all the canopies,walls, heaters, and hot food. Thanks to everyone who brought heaters and propane. Saturday especially would have been very uncomforable without them. I remember well what is was like before we had heat. Special thanks to Nanci for all that you do. I hope that you know how much your generosity is truly appreciated. You take such good care of us and make sure we are well fed. The soups and sandwiches were wonderful.

Although a couple of teams got off to a rocky start on Saturday, AND being short one of our height dogs for the day due to Sampsyn's illness, we managed to pull it all together today. Both Gal and Tammie had to pick up extra racing to cover for poor Sampsyn, who was downright pitiful on Saturday. You could see he didn't feel well. I can't thank Marsha enough for allowing me to list Tammie on the Multibreed team as his backup. This limits her ability to run with the Wisconsin team for 90 days, but we would have otherwise had to forfeit. It was a lot of racing for a height dog and I really appreciate you and Tammie being there for us.

Both Regular Division Teams did very well in both points and placements. The Flyers took second place and had some great racing. Gal stepped right up as (almost) fulltime height dog when she had to pick up some of Sampsyn's 15 heats on that team. He was supposed to be HER backup. She did GREAT! She is only going to get better and better. Stuff had some very good racing and placed First. I don't know if everyone realized it or not, but that last race against Fur Fun determined whether each of us got first or second. It was great to see everyone's competitive side kick in and bring it home for a first.

The Multibreed team had a rough day on Saturday with a sick dog, and some other little problems that seemed to crop up. But Sunday found them running much better and most of the heats today were clean and good. It wasn't enough to make up a placement, but it did help make up some points.

The Open team also had some issues on Saturday and we had quite a few No Finishes. But again, it all seemed to come together today and they were able to recoup some of their points, and come back for a Third Place Finish.

At some point most dogs are going to have an off race, an off day, or an off week. We just have to help them through it and wait for a better day. Fortunately, Sunday was a better day. I appreciate everyone's patience with the issues that cropped up on Saturday on all the teams.

Everyone did a great job of helping out. Special thanks to all our boxloaders, and thanks to everyone who helped with warmups.
Here they are. Stats and points. The sheets were a bit of a mess with all the changes, shuffles, and mishaps. It took some deciphering in places. If anything looks obviously, and majorly, wrong let me know and I will recheck. Otherwise, I am rather tired of looking at them :-)

Dave/Becky: I didn't do stats for Sampsyn. After comparing them to his previous tournament, I really didn't feel like it was valid data. So I decided to omit them altogether. We'll get updated stats for Sampsyn at his next tournament when he feels like his old self again.