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She's Red Hot.......
In Isobel's words:
"Maisie went off to a Flyball tournament this weekend. Since she has had
virtually no training, the goal was just to put her in warm-ups and see how
she coped with the frenzy of a tournament.
We started with restrained recalls, which did not go particularly well - she
patterns very quickly and she knew the aim of the game was to get the ball
from the box, so she was trying to turn and do that.
When we caved to her pressure and allowed her to do so, things went much
better. She was delighted to go down get her ball and bring it back,
ignoring ( much to my surprise ) all distractions.
Some teams had to pull at the last moment because of kennel cough, so there
were a couple of races with nobody running in the parallel lane, and it was
decided to let her try to actually run with the team since we would n't have
to worry about her going over to visit the opposition - no problem and she
had her FD.
At the end, when there was a team running against us, we put her in again
and again - no problem - but her team-mates messed up!!! The rest of the
team was most apologetic , since otherwise she could have also pulled off
her FDX. She was, in fact, the only dog on our team to run clean throughout
the day!
For some of this, we had her being run by the daughter of one of the team
members, Kendra, aged 11 years, who adores her and was desperate to have a
little dog to run ( her family's dogs are too large for Kendra to manage)
and with me alongside coaching them, the 2 youngsters pulled it off. Kendra
can certainly run faster than me, as can Maisie, so she may become Maisie's
regular handler!
In the meantime, however, although Flyball is not my favourite dog activity
it looks like Maisie and I will be trucking off to train her properly for
the game, rather than just relying on her instinct to get the ball."
This brag will benefit North Toronto Cat Rescue
Flash!!
Turns out that Maisie actually got her FDX in her first venture into Flyball
(somebody on our team miscalculated the points).
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