Drax October 2012, Dylan FD-Gold
Very tiring day at Drax, but it’s always a well run competition and even with three rings and a minor medical emergency that shut down one of the rings at the end of the day, we were still heading home for 7pm. Definitely confirmed my feelings about winter tournaments though, I hate being cold and arriving/leaving in the dark!
I boxloaded for the second team, who finished 2nd, and ran a new seedtime of 20.35! Not all the dogs were running at full capacity at the same time, so there is definitely more to come from this lineup.
Dylan was in the first team, subbing for Norah; we finished 3rd in 18.60, which was respectable. I’m pleased with how Dylan ran, his boxturn was a little bit hit-and-miss but didn’t deteriorate completely, and he wasn’t going wide. I struggled running lead with him, his stride pattern was obviously different going over 12″ and so I was anywhere between 0.02 – 0.21 on my starts. Not good enough! He also lost concentration in the afternoon and reverted to looking up at me on the line, but we very rarely run lead dog so it’s not something I can train for. He was clocking 4.8 – 4.9s including starts, and that was consistent all day, which I’m reasonably pleased with. Dyl’s times come with building his confidence through consistency, and he didn’t have that this weekend. I do think this team could be faster, we just need time to settle into a new lineup and feel comfortable as a team. Unfortunately that’s not going to happen, as this team won’t run together again.
Dylan also got his Gold award, finally! He actually got the points for it at Drax in July, but they didn’t have his certificate at any of the other tournaments we went to until now (I’m not sure why it wasn’t at Sutton Fields, but it wasn’t!).
No more tournaments for us until next March now, although I’m currently not sure if I want to continue with flyball at all. I enjoy competing, and I love training my dogs, but I have a lot of problems with the sport. Although I like everyone in my team, I’m not happy with our team structure and don’t think it works for me or my dogs. I did also initially write a whole paragraph here about the “politics” of the flyball community as a whole, including the militant pro-NAFA/European people, but it’s sort of irrelevant to my decision to continue. I will see how training goes over the next few weeks and make a decision for January.