2011 Summer Tour – Part I – Utah & Colorado

The opening leg of the 2011 summer tour started out with a few “local” (well, in neighboring states!) flyball tournaments…

Stampede U-FLI Flyball Tournament

Hurricane, Utah

June 3-4

Hurricane, Utah is just a few hours north of Las Vegas, we entered one D.E.O. Speedwaggin’ team just for the purposes of working on our newbs in warm-ups. U-FLI is an awesome venue for new dogs, as the jumps are lower and they offer singles and doubles racing. An added benefit for us is that it’s “no-pressure” because points aren’t earned by your club for Regional Championships like they are in NAFA Flyball. So winning isn’t important!

Also joining us was Zee Marie and her Great Dane, Jackpot, from Las Vegas. Zee’s “famous” MACH Great Dane, Mr. Bojangles, also ran in Flyball but recently passed away. Jackpot is her new up-and-coming star.

Jackpot is doing fabulous with his recalls and tug drive. We also had him running to the box, catching a ball from the boxloader, and then running back down the lane. It is a thunderous and scary site to see him pounding down the lane back to his tug!!! Jackpot is learning his box turns on a special larger, springloaded box, which we took into the lane for the last race on Sunday for warm-ups. He got in a couple full-lane runs to a 3 or 4 footed turn off the box and back down the lane to his tug. He’s going to be awesome!!!!

During racing, Zee handled Kaya for us. She had several perfect passes and even got a 3.9 with her! Keri started with Envy, Ethan handled Power, and Cynthia from a team in California handled Arrow for us. Josh from Blazin’ Tails in Utah boxloaded for us the whole weekend.

While our racing wasn’t anything spectacular, and I’m not even sure what places we finished or what our best times were, we witnessed a lot of OTHER teams having some fantastic runs! Touch N’ Go from Nevada, Stampede from Utah, and Synergetic Surge from Edmonton, Canada were there…and they raced some of the fastest dogs I have ever seen.

Touch N’ Go was not running their “A” team, which has hit 14 second runs many, many times. They are the only team in the world to run sub-15. Inconceivable, really! But they were running their “B” team, which ran many low 15’s…not too shabby. It was really cool to see them bring out some of their brand new dogs out in Singles racing. They were running one newb against another of their more seasoned dogs, with the purpose of holding back or pushing with the other dog, for training purposes. Every thing that Touch N’ Go does, they do with a purpose…part of their master plan to bring out the best in every dog. They patiently take it step by step, and perfection takes time!

Stampede also has a lineup that runs low 15’s. Their anchor on that team is a black Whippet, named Target, owned by Jenna Brown,  whose fastest lap time is a 3.4. Yes I said 3.4. I saw him run quite a few 3.5’s…crazy! His turn is a little wild, he’s a good example of a clean turn producing a 3.5, where his wilder turns ended up being 3.7 or 3.8.

Pulse, a Border X Whippet, from Synergetic Surge Flyball team

Synergetic Surge was only entered in Singles racing. They ran Pulse, a Border-Whippet, in Singles and had a record setting 3.541 official singles time on his first heat on Saturday. I’ve seen Pulse’s littermate, Stare, racing on the X Team and he is also spectacular. It is dogs like this that will bring many more teams into the 14-second times!

After racing on Saturday we headed over to a reservoir that is right across the street from the Fairgrounds in Hurricane. The dogs had a blast swimming in the lake, and Jackpot swam for the first time in open water! The Hurricane location is fabulous for RV parking or tent camping on site, has beautiful grass for exercising the dogs, and is a clean, gorgeous facility that is perfect for Flyball!

RUFF NAFA Flyball Tournament

Brighton, Colorado

June 9-11

We barely made it to the RUFF Tournament…we had 12 minutes to spare!

Two days before we left Las Vegas, Ethan’s Land Cruiser was totaled so we were dealing with trying settle an insurance claim before we left. And packing up the whole house in Vegas so that we could lease it out while we are gone for the summer. And trying to make arrangements for a replacement vehicle to tow a trailer back to Colorado. We were packing and cleaning for over 48 hours straight and then were told on Thursday at noon that the insurance company was not getting us a replacement truck to tow the trailer. So then we had to store everything in a spare bedroom instead of bringing it with us to Colorado, and then we finally left at 3pm on Thursday. Had to stop and sleep on the road Thursday night since we had not slept for 2 days. Then ran out of gas in that stretch of Utah near Green River with no gas stations for 100 miles, but got on the road again to arrive at the Tournament in Denver at 3:48pm. Racing started at 4:00. Kind of wished we would have just missed Friday night’s Multibreed racing…it was a complete mess and we placed 3rd and 4th.

Dropped off Ethan at the Denver Airport early Saturday morning, he left to DisneyWorld in Florida for a week with the family. Then Melissa and I ran the two Division I teams with the help of Lindsey from RUFF, Stuart from Rocky Mountain Flyball, and Susan from Live and Let Fly. We placed 1st and 3rd on Saturday and 1st and 2nd on Sunday…overall had a very sucessful weekend!

The dogs and I spent the rest of the week at my mom’s house in Fort Collins, packing and organizing food for the longest leg of the tour – to Alaska!  View the next blog post..