CanAm 2016 has officially started!

Keep us posted! Spirit is crossing her tiny little paws for you guys!

 

Awwww :-( Oh well, at least you got to go and run!!!!!!

 

Aw sorry they changed the team up. Why did that happen?

 

No trophy for Missy either. Going into the last race, we needed to beat the other team to get into the division finals. And they were in the same position (needed to beat us). It went to the 5th heat and everything just went to hell. 2nd dog bobbled, 3rd dog went early, and then Missy got away from me for another early pass. The other team ran clean so they won. It could have gone either way as they also had a dog that had bobbled in the other heats. We were a little disappointed that we didn't make the finals, but at the same time.. that meant we were done racing and could leave at 5 instead of going to the finals and not getting out of there until 9pm.

Missy earned her Onyx title (20k points) on Saturday. It was very exciting to get it at CanAm! Our teammate made us a really cool wooden plaque with Missy's picture and a list of all her titles and the dates she earned them. She'll get her official plaque from NAFA in a few months.

Missy ran great this past weekend. She's been having some striding issues since May, and we've been working with a trainer from California to fix it for a couple months now. When we moved her to start dog, she was fine at first, but then all of the sudden started taking off way too early for the first jump and would knock it completely over. Eventually she did this so many times, she started stutter stepping at the line and her times increased. She went to running high 4.1's- low 4.3's to 4.5's-4.6's. First I thought it was something physical, but a trip to the vet (who also does chiro) ruled that out. I started taking her to get trigger point massages right before tournaments to see if that helped, and it kinda did.. but ultimately I decided to try working with this trainer. Our friend built a facility for us to practice in and it was completed at the end of August. He has been meeting us during the week to practice and take some videos, then I send the videos to the trainer and she gives us some feedback and suggest what to do next. I wouldn't classify myself as a perfectionist, but when you have a dog that is nearly perfect (at flyball) and all of the sudden she starts having these issues, it's really hard emotionally. I should have pulled her from racing after our July tournament but I had already committed to September and CanAm. Luckily, she seems to finally be back to normal. We moved her to anchor (4th) and she ended up putting up some great times this weekend. We still have a lot of work to do before I'm comfortable saying it's completely resolved, but I'm happy to see some good progress.

 

I have videos from the runs when Missy earned her Onyx title. Once I get to a WIFI source I am going to upload them on YouTube and get them posted. Should be later today. I am just slacking. haha