Dragon Breaks The U-FLI Singles Record!!!!!!

CONGRATULATIONS Dragon and Stephanie!! Dragon became the fastest singles dog in U-FLI with a time of 3.603 this past weekend!!


Lets start at the beginning....

We made a spur of them moment decision after the Bishop tournament to go to Stampede's Summer Hot Spot tournament after someone had to pull one team at the last minute and there was a slot open for us to race in. After the last tournament there were a few kinks that we thought we needed to work out with our green dogs. We also thought it would be great experience for Dragon to run singles again to give him more experience and confidence. We decided to go for one day and just make a fun easy weekend of it.

We woke up at 4:30am and drove out to Hurricane UT. Everyone knows I'm not an morning person but I can usually wake up early for flyball. Plus I'm use to getting no sleep before flyball tournaments because Kathy and I are usually so excited we talk the whole night before and only end up getting a few hours of sleep anyways. We also lost an hour going to UT so we needed to get up extra early. The drive to UT was beautiful!

We got to the tournament site bright and early and our awesome friends from Utah Tail Blazers had saved us the most perfect spot. They are a great bunch. We helped each other out all day and it worked out great. We so appreciated their help. Our small little team only came with four people (plus Kurt) so if it were not for their wonderful help we would not have been able to race. This was the first weekend I was able to use my wire crates!! WOO HOO!! I'm such a wire crate convert! Thank you Omaha Speed Racers!! The wire crates give my dogs so much more room to stretch out and so much more ventilation! AND its so much easier to haul into the building!! Before you know it I might convert to using just an X-pen!!

Our main focus of the day was to get Stare running in start, get Psycho more experience passing and run singles with Dragon. We started off the morning with a bang! Stare came out on fire! This boy loves to start. In Bishop he was running anchor for a few various reasons and was just gaining his confidence. He was solid all weekend and did amazing in Bishop but he ran in start this weekend with a vengeance! It was like he was telling us this is where I want to be! Okay okay Stare, you can run in start! The big blue bullet ran awesome! We were all so proud of Stare but it was so cute to see how happy Kathy was. She has put a ton of hard work into this dog he loves to play the game for her!

My little red merle fluff ball ran like a big boy this weekend! He is passing like a pro and gaining confidence each and every heat. I can no longer call him a baby dog! Psycho is so much fun to run, he runs with so much passion and personality it just cracks me up. One time when I was revving him to start just as he was taking off he let out a big WOOF WOOF. It had everyone laughing. When he comes back he runs past me with the ball and gives me a few more woofs. Maybe its more like GRR GRR than a woof. LOL! Very proud of my boy. His box turn has held up beautiful and he just loves the game. Before he lines up again he usually tries to give me a few kisses. :-)

Last but definitely not least, Dragon ran singles and did better than we ever expected. He ran singles for the first time about a month ago but you could tell he had matured so much since than. He ran with with so much confidence, he was so much more sure of his footing, and he really understood the game. Dragon broke the UFLI singles record with a 3.603!! Dragon for sure is a special whippet. Anyone who has met him can tell you what a cool dude he is. His zest for life is contagious. His work ethic rivals any BC. He loves people to the point that it hurts. Literally! He usually is so excited to see people that he will bonk your eye, bite your lip, scratch you to pieces, clean out your sinuses. All in a very loving way though! It is always so much fun to watch Dragon and Steph. They are such a great team! Steph and her Border Collie Sage (first dog ever to post a 3.6x in singles) held the title of UFLI's fastest singles time in 2006 so it was very cool to see Steph take the title back with Dragon. We want to give a special thank you to Louise Hoelscher of Poeta Whippets for this very special boy! Steph did a lot of searching for the perfect whippet and found him at Poeta Whippets!



Since we only entered the tournament for one day we drove back home and had a pool party at Kathy's house! It was such a great way to end a perfect day of racing. We had about 15 dogs all out at once jumping in the pool after a hot day of racing. I wish I had gotten it on video. It was like they were all in fast forward! They were having a blast. I almost didn't realize that my BS Hostel who usually thinks she is allergic to water was jumping in the pool! I have tried to get her to swim for 2 years now and this was the first time she willingly jumped in the pool by herself. I thought that was the most perfect way to end the day. But nope! The most perfect way was to end the day was with some of Alex's (Kathy's husband) hamburgers. WOW, I have never tasted such a juicy well made burger! It was to die for! As always X had great time and can not wait for the next tournament. We are very very Xcited to get Dragon in a line up and see what the crazy red brindle Whippet Boy Wonder can do!

Bedlam in Bishop

Okay, Okay, so I have been a total blogging slacker! This blogging thing is hard to keep up!! I’ll try to be timelier in the future. But since we are going to another tournament this weekend I figured I would at least try to blog about the last one first!

Seek, Hostel, Drastic, Stare - 15.699

 

X formed late last year and we have been slowly trying to integrate all of our green dog into line ups and tweaking things here and there. One of our main goals when we started X was to make sure that each and every dog reached their full potential. We practiced hard all year long and we were finally able to put together an “A” team in Bishop. Stare ran on a team for the very first time and did awesome! Drastic ran in the pack for the very first time and was as solid as they get. Drastic only has eyes for her mom’s arms and hands (LOL!). Hostel came back with a vengeance after sitting out for 8 months while I tweaked a few things. We still have a ton of things to work on and fine tune. We realized just how much more work we had to do when we finally put these four dogs together. But we are excited, hopeful and look forward to continuing to improve our dogs and line ups. But with all that being said we were very proud to say we broke in to the 15s for the first time!!! Our line up was Seek (9” HD), Hostel, Drastic and Stare. Our best time of the weekend being a 15.699!! Woo hoo!!! This for sure would not have been possible without Gina’s mad box loading skills!! Gina is the BEST BOX LOADER EVER!!! She takes her job very serious and is always on top of things. It’s a very exciting time for us. Our hard work is finally paying off and each goal and milestone has been so much fun to share with this amazing group of people and dogs. We also have a few other green dogs that are showing tons of potential to make it to the A team!

Speaking of green dogs showing potential!!! Dragon had an amazing debut weekend in Bishop. He is a 14 month old whippet and from the day Steph brought him home we all knew he was special. We had been around a few whippets before and had never seen a whippet with this much drive, work ethic, personality, spunk and not to mention SPEED!! Match that with Steph’s amazing training skills and dedication to make this a positive experience for Dragon and what do you get? You get a debut weekend that people only dream about! Dragon’s best official time on the clock in singles was a 3.645. His best line-to-line time was a 3.559!! Go DRAGON!! X is really really looking forward to adding Dragon to our A team! Congratulations Steph and Dragon!!

Replay, Later and Psycho all ran on a team for the first time too! They were all very good boys and did awesome! Psycho took to passing like a pro and had no issues and carried his ball back the whole tournament! Later is going to be a great HD addition to our team and we cant wait to see what kind of times the little guy can post. The ever handsome Replay did great! He ran some awesome times and also passed like a pro. We look forward to also adding Replay to our A team line up. He is just as fast as he is handsome!

Bishop is just one of those tournaments that everyone talks about. Lickety Splits did an awesome job hosting. The venue is awesome, the town is awesome, the FOOD in town is awesome and then going to the lake after is so much fun! The dogs love it! We also would not have had such a great time if it were not for help of our Bay Area BFFs (Tracy and Leslie) and Tooie. You guys ROCK! Thank you so much for all your help! We are so Xcited for what the future might bring. We just love this crazy game of flyball!