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Start of the New NAFA Year...End of Racing for 2013.

11/18/2013

The Truro tournament that took place on November 9 & 10th was a great start the 2013 NAFA racing season.

We were going into this tournament pretty shorthanded, with only 6 member’s attending.  Then when an injury occurred to one of our dogs the week before, that put us down to 5 members and three 4 dog teams for the most part, with an old veteran as back-up. We knew we had our work cut out for us!

One dog that we knew we would be asking a lot of was Ketchup. She had never run full time in a tournament and now we were asking her to do that, plus it was 5/5 heats for 5 races. Thankfully this little girl kept her head on and ran some amazing times!  Pulling out 3.9’s and 4.0’s end of the day in the pack. She also earned her FDCh title on Saturday.

Saturday was a successful day with Aviators taking first place in Regular 1, Red Eye taking first in Open 1 and Aerodynamic almost had first in Regular 2, it came down to the last race, but we just could not pull it off, so we ended up second.

Sunday once again things went very well for our teams. Ketchup earned her FDCh-S title, Aerodynamic posted a new personal best time of 19.50 and all three of our teams won their respective divisions.

It was very nice to see some old faces return to the mats this weekend that we have not seen in a long time and a BIG congrats to Matt Banfield who started judging! He did a great job and we look forward to seeing him on the mats in the future.

Hard to believe that was the last tournament until April 2014! Winter training started for us last weekend at practice.
We have a few green dogs who we are hoping will make their debuts on the mats next spring. We have some
young dogs we will be working on specific items with and our solid dogs…well; they are there to help them along the way! We could not do half of our training without our solid dogs who know the ropes and help teach the young dogs. And of course – puppy training!

We hope everyone has a wonderful holiday season and a great winter. Hopefully it is not too harsh!

Until Next Time!
*Holly*

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Fun Time South of the Border!

11/6/2013

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This past weekend in Boothbay was an interesting one for sure!

We always love the MaineIACS tournament and we try to get down to it as much as possible. This year we travelled down with 3 tight teams of 4 dogs and 8 people.  This is a two-day tournament, which we typically do not have in our
Region. So we had to make sure that we double listed the right dogs for the right teams, as we would not be able to change it on Sunday.

Three of our members had never been to an out of Region tournament: Dave, Noelle & Sonya.  So they were excited to see all of the new dogs and race against new teams.

The weekend started out interesting, as we checked into our hotel to find out that we had no hot water, oh well, what can you do? At least we got a discount on our rooms and it only lasted one day.

Heading into racing on Saturday we knew we had our work cut out for us. Aviators was in Regular 1 and there was quite a spread in seed times, with only 2 teams in the 16’s and the other 3 in the 20’s. Red Eye had a team in their division that was running the 17’s, which we could not do, so we had to try and take the races we could and hope for some help.  Aero was seeded perfectly, so we knew if we ran clean and the times we could, we had a chance at first.
For Regular 1, we knew the team we had to worry about was Ruff Enuff; they were the other team with the 16 seed time. We faced them 3rd race of the day and it was not a good one!  We were still trying to figure out the new line-up of Flight, Callie, Carlie & Feist, so one early here, a dropped ball there and we were done, 1-2-3. Oh well! It was still super fun!

It was really Aviators last race on Saturday that took the cake for the weekend. We were running against Maine Coast Runners and we knew we had to win if we had any chance of taking first the next day.  First heat was clean and we were up 1-0. 2nd heat, there was a foul, a dog had run down to the box and well, left something behind! 2nd heat –
loss. Then before we could figure out which dog had fouled in the lane, we turned around and Callie was, well,
finishing her business.  3rd heat – loss! First time our team has ever lost TWO heats because of one dog fouling in the lane, lol! We had to delay the race for a few minutes while the mess was cleaned up, it was not looking good, down
2-1. Thankfully Callie felt better and we were able to take the next two heats. Not sure if Dave felt better, I don’t
think he will live this one down anytime soon – especially since it was our Region 10 judge Cy who was officiating!
Red Eye ended the day 2-2 and Aero was sitting at 3-1. Both teams had some really great racing! It was fun to see
3 vets on the same team, pulling out some nice wins (Maverick, Jolie & Trout) and Red Eye was really a family affair with Raine & Rev running with their daughter Calli. Pongo fit right in on this red & white team!

Sunday started with…snow! But it did not last – thank goodness! Aviators had a tough morning ahead of them. They were only racing 4 races that day, but they all happened within 19 races total. Last race of the day for them was against Ruff Enuff.  It was a good race, but Ruff Enuff took it, which put us in 2nd.  Red Eye went 3-1 to end up 2nd and Aero had a great day and ended up 1st!

We came into the tournament with 3 potential titles and all were achieved! Flight (Stefani): FM; Callie (Dave): FMX and Pongo (Sonya): FMX.

Here are some highlights from the weekend: seeing all of our Region 13 friends and meeting so many new ones; Steve’s perfect start on NAFA lights; James running his first flyball dog; Noelle’s new term for a close pass
“They’s was kissing”; Raine losing her ball over the backstop, jumping over to get it and then still returning over all of the jumps…too bad it was the wrong lane; Cy & Carl both offering Dave a poop bag on Sunday; Flight giving it her absolute best against Fatal (Ruff Enuff’s border/whippet); Jolie running some 6.4’s at 7 years old; Trout pulling out sub 5’s t 9 years old and last but not least Callie’s epic fouling in the lanes!

We had a great time and hope to get back to Region 13 again soon. We are also pumped that not only are the MaineIACS coming back to our June tournament, but so is Ruff Enuff! Hopefully we can convince a few more Region 13 teams to make the trip!

This weekend, we are off to Truro to compete with 3 teams in our region’s first tournament of the new NAFA season!   We will be a small crew of only 6 people, so it will be a busy weekend for sure! If you are in the area, be sure to stop by and see some great racing!

Until Next Time!

*Holly*

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Start of the New NAFA Year...End of Racing for 2013.

Fun Time South of the Border!

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