Postal Vote Results, etc.
Flyball Postal Vote results came back, 92% in favour. Fantastic news, Kim will be thrilled to be over 12″ and Mollie will be exceptionally thrilled to be doing 13″. I said on Monday that I thought there would be a small voting turnout, and I was right: just 31% responded, and 6% of which were spoilt votes. I think the reason for the low response was due to a variety of reasons. I know a few single-dog owners who flyball with us, and I’m pretty sure none of them responded because they’re just not that interested in flyball. It’s a nice hobby for occasional weekends. I have a feeling owners with slow dogs (not old or small, just slow big dogs, like Labradors) also won’t have responded, because they a) don’t appreciate how much of a difference 1″ makes, b) run with a 7″ dog and therefore don’t have to worry about jump height, or c) don’t run with a height dog at all, and therefore will be over 14″ no matter what result came through. Basically, I think the main turnout comes from those people with height dogs (who are in the minority, obviously), or those people who are heavily involved with the sport (ie. Team Captains, trainers, multiple-dog owners who compete every weekend etc). Since people with height dogs are usually those people heavily involved with flyball, that’s not a huge amount who are really motivated to vote.
Oh, and it was a 2 week turn around. I bet plenty of people just plain forgot.
Speaking of forgetting things, I completely forgot that last weekend was Dylan’s last agility show of 2008. Kim is at Wyre this weekend for her last show, but Dylan isn’t entered. We then have Donny flyball on Sunday and we’re done for the year! Still waiting to hear from Jane about the teams, but I’m pretty sure Dylan is in Marsh and Kim is dropping to Nights and running with Mollie. Dylan and Kim are both running about the same singles times at the moment, which is very frustrating when trying to plan teams! Dylan can run 4.8’s without breaking a sweat but he seems to ease off indoors to 5s or so, I’m not sure if he’s just not sure about indoor competitions yet or whether it’s because he’s running with scary Lolly. Kim has been running around 5s outdoors but I know she tends to knock a bit off that when she’s indoors because she likes all the noise, and when she goes to 12″ in January I’d expect her to be running pretty consistent 4.9’s at least. (Maybe more at Sheffield which is proper indoors on rubber matting, where she always clocks her fastest times).
Of course, the other thing is that Dylan might be easing off because he’s not running anchor at the moment, it’s definitely his fastest position but we already have an anchor dog for Marsh. At least that isn’t something I have to worry about with Kim, she doesn’t care where she runs!
Anyway, we’ll see this weekend. Who knows!?