Change Year

My mother and I have been calling this year a “change year” for flyball, because we know that by the end of 2011 our teams will look very different. We have a great set of puppies and new starters who will be hitting their stride over the autumn and summer, ready to start jostling for serious places in the teams, but we equally have several dogs who are showing their age, and need to be eased back from their current roles as mainstays. This is one of the things I love about flyball; the old dogs teach the new dogs and leave behind a legacy, and once time has rolled around the new dogs become the old dogs and teach the new dogs the next time around.

(Kim was taught by Moss and Fly, Flloyd and Seb. Mollie was taught by Stan and Bryn, Zara and Harvey. My old ladies are now teaching Roxy, Lara, Sully, Diva and Fly.)

Change years are inherently good things, albeit a little bit sad, a lot of fun, and often extremely unpredicable. Things need to keep moving though, otherwise they get stale. I am really looking forward to the Flyball Fever/Rocket Relay seminar in 2 weeks, and I think I’ve made some progress on how and where I need to go with agility training. I have three documents on my USB called contacts1, contacts2, and thingstoremember: the first one is a list of links to articles, blogposts, videos, as well as c+p’d conversations regarding 2o2o contacts. The second is the same, but for running contacts. The last is all the snippets of poems and quotes I love.